Family environmental factors influencing the developing behavioral controls of food intake and childhood overweight

This article highlights environmental mechanisms that may mediate parent-child similarity in weight status. Genetic factors are implicated in familial patterns of adiposity, but relatively little research has assessed family environmental factors that also may mediate these family resemblances. We present a model and related research illustrating how, for example, overweight parents may place their children at risk for overweight by way of foods they select and make available to children, by serving as models for children's eating, and by way of child feeding practices. Child feeding practices, including restriction or pressuring children to eat, are linked to parents own eating style and weight status, and influence children's food preferences, selection, and developing controls of food intake. Potentially modifiable aspects of the family eating environment can increase risk for childhood overweight, influencing the child's developing controls of food intake. These finding suggest that effective preventive interventions for childhood overweight must address the family environment.