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

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT06111040
• Other study ID #: R01DK132642
• Secondary ID: 30291
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 7, 2023
• Est. completion date: September 30, 2027

Study information

• Verified date: January 2024
• Source: Temple University
• Contact: Christina Croce, MS
• Phone: 215-707-8672
• Email: christina.croce[@]temple.edu
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

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.

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.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Recruiting
• Enrollment: 750
• Est. completion date: September 30, 2027
• Est. primary completion date: September 30, 2027
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 4 Years to 5 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Hispanic or Black parent/primary caregiver race/ethnicity, based on the participating caregiver's self-disclosure;

2. Low household income, based on US poverty income guidelines for WIC/Head Start eligibility;

3. Child ages 4 or 5 years at baseline;

4. Parent/ primary caregiver with legal representation (having 50% or more custody of child);

5. Parent/primary caregiver reporting primary responsibility for child feeding outside of childcare (being with child when they are eating at least two times daily);

6. Caregiver with a cell phone that can be used to send and receive text messages. If there is more than one age-eligible child in the family, we will ask the caregiver to pick the index child.

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Parent/primary caregiver <18 years of age;

2. Child history of major food allergies (e.g., peanuts);

3. Child medication use (e.g., insulin), developmental disability (e.g., autism) or medical condition(s) (e.g., diabetes) known to affect food intake and growth;

4. Foster child.

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

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

Intervention

Other:
• Measurement
The only interventions are at the measurement level and consist of two behavioral protocols designed to assess children's eating behavior, where food stimuli are provided and children's behavioral responses are recorded.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center	Houston	Texas
United States	Temple University - Center for Obesity Research and Education	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania

Sponsors (3)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Temple University	Baylor College of Medicine, University of Minnesota

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

References & Publications (1)

Fisher JO, Hughes SO, Miller AL, Horodynski MA, Brophy-Herb HE, Contreras DA, Kaciroti N, Peterson KE, Rosenblum KL, Appugliese D, Lumeng JC. Characteristics of eating behavior profiles among preschoolers with low-income backgrounds: a person-centered analysis. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2022 Jul 23;19(1):91. doi: 10.1186/s12966-022-01323-y. Erratum In: Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2022 Aug 8;19(1):103. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Excessive dietary intakes	Indicators: SFAS intakes and meal/snack sizes estimated from 24-hour dietary recalls	Baseline, 18 months
Primary	BMI change	% of the 50th percentile per age- and sex-specific CDC reference values for BMI on a log scale	Baseline, 18 months
Secondary	Observed food motivated behaviors	Indicators: Eating in the absence of hunger and relative reinforcing value of food	Baseline, 18 months