Introduction

• Early childhood is a particularly critical time for healthy eating.

  • Food preferences set early in life establish a pattern that persists into adulthood.

    • A child who eats a lot of fat, sugar, and salt comes to prefer these tastes and may have lifelong difficulty restricting their intake.

  • Obesity has its roots in this stage.

    • Longitudinal studies found that overweight children were at an increased risk of becoming overweight adults.

• “Fat-phobia” begins at this age, children becoming body conscious at younger ages, sensitive to messages and their social environment

• How healthy eating is presented is equally important

• In a Dutch study of nearly 5,000 4-year-olds, mothers who pressured their child to eat were more likely to have an underweight child.

• Mothers who restricted their child’s eating increased their chances of having an overweight or obese child.

  • These relationships held even after controlling for many factors that could have influenced maternal feeding practices and preschoolers’ weight gain.

Physical Growth and Health

• Social environment greatly influences food choices:

  • Children imitate food choices of people they admire

  • Repeated, unpressured exposure increases acceptance

  • Emotional climate at mealtimes has a powerful impact

  • Restricting foods increases child’s desire for those foods

  • Children living in poverty may lack access to sufficient high-quality food

Food Allergies

• Food allergy: an abnormal immune system response to a specific food.

• Reactions range from tingling in the mouth and shortness of breath and death.

• Higher risk of anaphylaxis in younger children.

• Children who suffer from food allergies are, on average, smaller and shorter than children without food allergies.

• Food allergies cost families $4,184 per year.

• Ninety percent of food allergies can be attributed to eight foods: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, soy, wheat, and shellfish – more common in childhood, many outgrow

• Immunotherapy in children can increase tolerance.

• Rate of allergies increased almost 4x in past 20 years

• Changes in diet, how foods are processed, and decreased vitamin D based upon less exposure to the sun, have all been suggested as contributors to the increase in allergy rates.