‘It's not something I really think about’: Parents' perspectives and practices about how much food to offer in early childhood

Children are born with an innate capacity to self-regulate their energy intake, but cues from the food environment can undermine children's self-regulation, promoting overconsumption, and challenging energy balance. The size of the portion offered by parents and caregivers has been shown to be correlated with how much food children consume, which is known as the portion size effect. Furthermore, some parental feeding practices may interfere with children's ability to self-regulate. The present research explored parents' perspectives and practices about how much food they offer to their children in Uruguay. Forty-two in-depth interviews with parents of children between 6 months and 5 years old were conducted. Results showed that parental decisions about portion sizes for their children were mostly unconscious and intuitive. Parents were unconcerned about portion sizes, mainly due to the belief that children are able to self-regulate. Although parents identified themselves as mainly responsible for deciding how much food to serve their children, the majority reported to be responsive when their child refuses to eat or finish their meal, or when they request to eat more. Coercive feeding practices were only mentioned by a minority of parents.

Practical Applications

Results from the present work stress the need to raise awareness of children's vulnerability to portion size effects, since portion size selection seems to be a highly arbitrary process. Further research is needed to identify the best approaches to disseminate information among parents and caregivers to promote appropriate portion sizes for children, as well as responsive feeding practices.