Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OBESITY
Volume 34, Issue 7, Pages 1116-1124Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ijo.2010.43
Keywords
childhood obesity; parents; prevention; infancy; environmental effects
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Most childhood obesity prevention efforts have focused on school-age children and adolescents and have had limited success. We argue that the first years of life, including the prenatal period, the postnatal suckling period and the transition to the modified adult diet, may provide opportunities for preventive interventions. These early periods are characterized by high plasticity and rapid transitions, and parents have a high degree of control over children's environments and experiences. Observational and experimental evidence reveal persistent effects of early environments on eating behavior and obesity risk, suggesting that interventions should be tested during these early periods. The central task parents have in early development points to their potential as key targets and agents of change in early preventive interventions. In this paper, we review evidence of early environmental effects on children's eating and obesity risk, highlighting ways that parental feeding practices and parents' own behaviors impact these outcomes and calling for further experimental research to elucidate whether these factors are indeed promising targets for childhood obesity preventive interventions. International Journal of Obesity (2010) 34, 1116-1124; doi:10.1038/ijo.2010.43; published online 2 March 2010
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available