Abstract
Emotional eating (EE) in children is the tendency to consume food that is energy dense and palatable, and this typically occurs in response to emotions that are negative (e.g. sadness). EE is a common eating behaviour that develops early in childhood, and there is strong evidence to indicate that EE has low heritability estimates, suggesting that this eating behaviour is highly dependent on a child’s environment. Moreover, EE is reliably associated with the development of childhood obesity, and so understanding what predicts this eating behaviour in children is important. This chapter presents an overview of how child EE is defined, how child EE is measured, and the theories that underpin the development of EE. This chapter then considers the different predictors of child EE in relation to parent factors, child temperament, and the emotional context in which they interact. The parent factors that are discussed relate to parental modelling of EE and parental feeding practices (i.e. use of non-responsive feeding practices, food to regulate emotions, food as a reward, restriction of food).
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Stone, R.A., Haycraft, E., Blissett, J., Farrow, C. (2024). Emotional Eating in Children. In: Meiselman, H.L. (eds) Handbook of Eating and Drinking. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75388-1_195-1
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