Infant and child feeding practices and childhood overweight: the role of restriction

This review addresses the association between restrictive feeding practices by parents and the development of overweight in children. To date, only one parent feeding domain - feeding restriction - has been consistently linked to variations in child eating patterns or weight status. Despite challenges to unravelling causal pathways, the most current data suggest that restrictive feeding practices are elicited by child characteristics (e.g. weight status or obesity risk) and depend on parent characteristics as well. Restriction, in turn, may maintain or exacerbate child overweight. There remain important questions to be addressed in this literature, pertinent both to the development of childhood overweight and clinically to overweight prevention. Two areas of importance are the roles of cultural differences, as well as genes that confer risk for overweight, on the relationship between restriction and child weight status.