Journal
CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES
Volume 4, Issue 2, Pages 138-143Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.1750-8606.2010.00132.x
Keywords
childhood obesity; obesogenic environment; learning; early experience; food preferences; eating behaviors; developmental systems theories
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Currently, children are developing in an obesity-promoting, or obesogenic, environment, which has emerged within the past 3 decades. This rapid change provides a rare opportunity to investigate the phenotypic outcomes that result from the expression of human genetic predispositions in a new environment. Unfortunately, the environmental changes that have occurred are associated with epidemic obesity rates in all age groups. Using a developmental perspective, this article argues that this probabilistic outcome is not predetermined, however. The article also provides examples of learning paradigms-familiarization and associative and observational learning-that present opportunities for parents and caregivers to restructure children's environments in early life, increasing the likelihood of healthy weight-status outcomes in the context of the current obesogenic environment.
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