Grazing in children: associations with child's characteristics and parental feeding practices

Purpose Grazing is a problematic eating behavior linked with poor weight loss outcomes, disordered eating psychopathology, and psychological distress in the adult population. However, no study assessed this behavior in children. Childhood is an important time frame for the development and maintenance of healthy eating habits, which can be influenced by children's psychological state, eating habits, and parental practices. This study investigates the associations between grazing behavior in children and children's psychological variables (anxiety, depression and withdrawn symptoms, body image dissatisfaction), children eating habits, and parental feeding practices. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 330 primary school students (6-10 years old) and their parents completed measures assessing children's grazing, anxiety/depression and withdrawn symptoms, body image dissatisfaction, children eating habits and style, and parental feeding practices. Results The path analysis tested showed that more restrictive parental feeding practices, inappropriate children eating habits, children's anxiety/depression symptoms, and body image dissatisfaction were associated with increased grazing scores (CMIN = 12.679; DF = 11; p = 0.315; RMSEA = 0.025; CFI = 0.990; NFI = 0.935; TLI = 0.982; IFI = 0.991; SRMR = 0.045). Conclusion Grazing tends to occur in a context of children's psychological distress, inappropriate children eating habits, and restrictive parental feeding practices. These variables should be addressed for the improvement of healthy eating habits and in weight-loss interventions for children.
This study was partially conducted at Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653), by the following grants to Eva Conceicao (IF/01219/2014 and POCI-010145-FEDER-028209). The funding body had no role in the design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; the writing of the manuscript; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.