Nurturing Needs Study: Parenting Food Motivated Children

Parenting Clinical Trial

Official title: Deconstructing Food Parenting Approaches to Obesity Prevention for the Highly Food Motivated Child

Status Recruiting

Clinical Trial Summary

High food motivation among children is trait-like and increases risks of unhealthy dietary intake and obesity. Scientific knowledge of how parenting can best support healthy eating habits and growth among children who are predisposed to overeating is surprisingly limited. This investigation will identify supportive food parenting approaches for obesity prevention that address the needs of highly food motivated children.

Clinical Trial Description

High levels of food motivation among young children are heritable, track over time, and associated with elevated risks of unhealthy eating and obesity. Despite significant growth of family-based obesity prevention efforts, the evidence base is remarkably scant on parenting highly food motivated children to prevent obesity and poor dietary outcomes. The need to move away from a "one-size-fits-all" approach to food parenting is particularly pronounced for children from racial and ethnic minority families with low income that experience greater disparities in obesity, are underrepresented in the food parenting and family-based prevention literatures, and for whom prevention efforts have had limited success to date. The goal of this investigation is to generate a robust basic science evidence for parenting highly food motivated children to prevent excessive dietary intakes and body mass index (BMI) gains during the preschool years among racial and ethnic minority families with low incomes. Using a prospective cohort design, this investigation follow 375 Hispanic and Black caregiver/child dyads with low incomes over 18 months as children transition from preschool to elementary school, when significant numbers of children begin to experience problems of poor diet quality and obesity. Children with varying food motivation will be recruited to understand whether highly food motivated children have different needs than other children. A multi-method approach will use state-of-the-art measures, including ecological momentary assessment, to comprehensively investigate the amount, types, and consistency of food parenting practices (i.e., specific, goal-oriented behaviors) needed to prevent food motivated behaviors, excessive dietary intake, and BMI gains in children. Specifically, the role of structure (i.e., theoretically supportive) and its differentiation from more coercive types of food parenting control will be comprehensively characterized. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Diet, Healthy
• Eating Behavior
• Obesity
• Parenting
• Pediatric Obesity

• NCT number: NCT06111040
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: Temple University
• Contact: Christina Croce, MS
• Phone: 215-707-8672
• Email: christina.croce@temple.edu
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 7, 2023
• Completion date: September 30, 2027