Attitudes Toward Food Are Formed Early in Life

To pinpoint the origins of childhood obesity, it helps to understand how food preferences and attitudes are established with age. Children’s responses to food are based initially on their bodies’ needs but are later shaped by social cues from those around them.

* Infants seem to be good self-regulators, able to adjust how much they eat to maintain a particular caloric intake.

But as children get older, parental preferences and routines begin to influence what and how much they eat. According to research from psychologist Leann Birch, head of the department of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University, varying portion size for 3-year-olds has no real effect on consumption. But by the time children reach age 5, they will eat more when served large portions.

* The love of sweet and salty tastes develops early in life.

From the time of birth, babies prefer sweet foods. Although a liking for salt appears innate, it may not be evident until 4 to 6 months of age. Babies reject sour and bitter tastes.

* Even well-meaning parents can inadvertently push children into unhealthy habits.

According to a 1999 study from Birch in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, encouraging a child to eat a particular food can increase the child’s dislike for the food by focusing attention on it. Similarly, to the extent that parents try to restrict children’s access to high-calorie foods, the children eat more of them.

* Daughters are more often the target of weight-loss efforts than sons are.

In results that have major social implications, researchers have found that women try to control their daughters’ weight more than their sons’, especially when the mothers have problems with their own weight or perceive their daughters as heavy. A dieting mom will tend to restrict her daughter’s weight more than a mother who isn’t dieting. In addition, researchers have seen that the extent to which parents try to control a child’s eating influences girls’ weights, but not boys’.

Researchers remain at a loss to explain these gender-based differences, although social pressures on girls to be slim and attractive may play a role. Being a big girl isn’t socially accepted; being a big boy can be OK.

* Habits and attitudes are ingrained early at the family dinner table.

Many children who see their parents on and off diets pick up the message that dieting--rather than learning to eat nutritiously and maintaining a healthy weight for a lifetime--is the norm.

“It’s spooky that we see this in families with girls as young as 3 or 4,” Birch said. In an article to be published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Assn., Birch and her colleagues interviewed 5-year-old girls about dieting in the summer before they entered kindergarten.

“We expected they wouldn’t be able to tell us much. Roughly half didn’t. But the other half gave surprisingly articulate responses,” Birch said. “The best predictor was whether or not their moms were dieting.”

When the girls were asked how people diet, many said “they drink chocolate milkshakes,” an indication that television commercials for diet products or seeing their own mothers try them makes a major impression.

* Many kids are dieting by the age of 9.

Although researchers don’t yet have the data, they suspect kids aren’t trying a sensible nutritional approach of eating more fruits and vegetables, but are probably skipping meals and drinking diet shakes.