PI: Kathleen Keller
Funder: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) NCT07095166
Administered in: College of Health and Human Development
Abstract:
Our study is being conducted for research purposes to look at how children respond to different types of food and make decisions about food. We aim to do this by monitoring children’s eating behaviors during different types of meals and meal locations.
Recently, laboratory studies have identified obesogenic eating behaviors, emphasizing that how children eat contributes to both overconsumption and greater adiposity. These obesogenic eating behaviors include components of eating microstructure such as larger bites, and faster eating and bite rates. Eating microstructure has been proposed as a modifiable behavioral target for obesity prevention, however, it is unclear if laboratory measures of child eating behavior translates to the home environment, where children consume two thirds of their total energy. As the home food environment may influence how children eat, it is critical to clarify whether traditional laboratory methods of studying eating microstructure translate to the home environment. Additionally, to establish effective, personalized interventions for pediatric obesity, it is critical to determine how the home food environment impacts patterns of eating behavior that facilitate overconsumption, particularly for children with higher adiposity as the home environment may amplify obesogenic eating behaviors. NICHD’s Pediatric Growth and Nutrition Branch emphasizes the importance of identifying early risk factors for childhood obesity, therefore, the planned research will utilize a smartphone based research platform to 1) test whether child eating styles observed in the lab generalize to more ecologically valid home environments and 2) identify aspects of home food environments that influence obesogenic eating behaviors.
This proposal will assess laboratory and home eating behaviors (e.g., bite rate, bite size, meal duration) in 100 prepubertal 6-9-year-old children to constrain variability in energy requirements. Children will be video-recorded while consuming identical study-provided meals at home and in the laboratory (order counter-balanced) in addition to typical meals and snacks at home. A networked camera will record meals in the lab and parents will use smartphone devices with Penn State’s Wear-IT app to video-record children at home. Parents will also report on social (e.g., feeding practices) and physical (e.g., foods available) characteristics of the home food environment, as these can influence child eating behaviors. This proposal will advance the clinical utility of meal eating styles by expanding observational coding of eating behaviors to the home environment. Test the generalizability of eating style across meals that vary by environment (i.e., laboratory versus home environments) and composition (i.e., study-provided versus typical at-home meal). As well as Identify aspects of the home food environment that drive children’s eating behavior.