Genetic Risk, Parental Feeding Practices, and Appetitive Traits in Early Life
Characterizing the Relationships of Genetic Risk and Parental Coercive Feeding Practices With Appetitive Traits and Adiposity Gain Across Early Life.
Who can join
As published by the study on ClinicalTrials.gov. "Not stated" means the study hasn't said — ask the study team.
- Age
- 27 Months to 72 Months
- Sex
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Compensation
- Not stated
Other requirements are listed under Eligibility below. Only the study team can confirm whether you can join.
What to expect
No one can promise a trial will help you personally — that is what the research is trying to find out.
What participation involves
Not stated in the study description — ask the study team about visits and procedures.
- Compensation
- Not stated
- Study-related exams and procedures are typically provided at no cost. This is how many trials work in general — confirm the details for this study with the study team.
- Participants are monitored closely by the research team throughout the study.
- Some participants may receive access to an investigational treatment, which is still being studied.
- Your participation helps researchers learn whether this approach could help future patients.
About this study
The preschool years (2-5 years of age) is a critical timeframe to shape the lifetime risk of obesity. While the causes of obesity are complex, appetitive traits related to overeating, such as high food approach and low food avoidance, are robustly associated with a greater BMI among children. Some children are genetically pre-disposed to expressing obesogenic appetitive traits, and those traits may mediate a genetic risk for obesity. Separately, parental feeding practices are emerging as an important, yet modifiable, influence on children's obesity risk. Coercive control feeding practices, such as strictly limiting a child's intake of highly palatable foods (restriction) and using food to control children's negative emotions (emotional feeding), are believed to be detrimental for young children because they impede self-regulatory skills around eating and may increase the saliency of highly palatable foods. The goal for this project is to disentangle the inter-relationships between coercive control feeding practices, children's obesogenic appetitive traits, and children's dietary intake across the preschool years to understand how coercive control feeding practices ultimately impact children's adiposity gain over time. Importantly, the investigators aim to understand how those effects differ based on children's underlying genetic risk for obesity. The investigators hypothesize that parents will respond to children's obesogenic appetitive traits by exhibiting more coercive control feeding practices (restriction, emotional feeding), which in turn, will promote future increase in obesogenic appetitive traits and overconsumption, leading to excess adiposity gain among children. Importantly, the investigators hypothesize children with a high genetic risk for obesity will be most susceptible to the negative effects of coercive control feeding practices because food is highly salient for them. The investigators will test the hypotheses among a cohort of children aged 2.5 years old using a longitudinal study design with repeated assessments every 6 months until children are 5 years old. If successful, study findings may be leveraged to develop tailored strategies to help parents support healthy eating behaviors among their young children that consider the heterogeneity in obesogenic appetitive traits among young children due to genetic risk factors.
Compensation is read from the study's own description and may be missing — always confirm with the study team.
Eligibility
Official eligibility criteria
Inclusion Criteria: * parent must be ≥18 years old, have primary custody of their child for ≥75% of the month, comprehend verbal and written English and not plan to move out of Vermont or New Hampshire during the study timeframe. * Children must be ≥2.25 and ≤2.99 years old at first visit and have normal or corrected-to-normal vision to enable eye tracking. Exclusion Criteria: * Children with any relevant food allergies or dietary restrictions, taking medication or with a medical condition that affects appetite or attention, or with a relative enrolled in the study will be excluded.
Study sites (1)
NH
- Dartmotuh College · Hanover, NH 03765John Brand, PhD · Study contact · john.brand@dartmouth.eduMore trials in Hanover