Pediatric Food Preferences and Eating Behaviors, Lumeng, Julie

Pediatric Food Preferences and Eating Behaviors reviews the body of scientific work that investigates why children eat the way they do, and whether and how those eating behaviors are modifiable. Before delving into the first of its three sections, Pediatric Behavioral Nutrition presents an introduction and the historical perspective of the topic. The first section, food acceptance, addresses the development of flavor preferences, the role of repeated exposure and other types of learning, the effects of modeling eating behavior, as well as, picky eating, food neophobia, and food selectivity. Section two, appetite, addresses appetite regulation and its plasticity in early development, the role of reward pathways in appetitive drive and regulation, genetic contributions to eating behaviors, food environmental influences on appetite regulation, and parenting influences on appetite and weight. Section three, cognitive aspects of eating behavior, addresses the neurocognitive underpinnings of childrens eating, the development of loss of control eating, and food cognitions and nutrition knowledge. Each chapter concludes with practical implications for practice, and the book concludes with recommended next steps.

• Delivers an up-to-date synthesis of the research evidence addressing the development of childrens eating behaviors from birth to age 18 years, biological and environmental predictors of the development of these behaviors, and evidence for how these behaviors may be modifiable in the service of improving childrens dietary intake and health outcomes
• Provides an in-depth synthesis of the basic eating behaviors that contribute to consumption patterns
• Translates the complex and sometimes conflicting research in this area to clinical and public health practice, so that this large body of scientific work can be applied
• Concludes each chapter with practical implications for practice
• Presents the limits of current knowledge and the next steps in scientific inquiry