A new study out of the University College of London concludes that children with unhealthy eating habits are likely to have learned them rather than having inherited them.
Home environment, rather than genetic or other heritable biological factors, the study found, is the main determining variable in whether or not children develop emotion-motivated eating behavior.
The researchers concluded that parental behavior such as giving food to upset children is a leading cause of children learning to use food to self-soothe.
According to senior researcher, Dr Clare Llewellyn, “The tendency to eat more as a response to unpleasant emotions may present a risk for the evolution of obesity. Emotional overeating- and emotional under-eating might potentially be key to the development of common eating disorders like anorexia or binge-eating. Understanding how poor eating habits develop is critical, since it helps clinicians give better advice on how to prevent or change these habitual eating problems, and where to direct future research.”
Recent twin studies corroborate these findings. A research project published by the journal Pediatric Obesity examined 398 British twins aged four years old. Fifty percent of the twins were raised with families where obesity was prevalent. The other 50 percent were raised by families where the parents had better-eating habits and maintained healthy weights.
Reports from the parents indicated that the children raised by obese families tended to develop unhealthy emotional eating habits- that is, eating to self-soothe while experiencing negative emotions.
Related studies showed that emotional eating habits came in the following forms;
- Eating rapidly
- Rate of delay in feeling full
- Tendency to eat for pleasure
Dr. Llewellyn says, “The trait begins to form in the all important formative years during pre-school. It indicates that there is good reason for giving parents better advice about the kinds of interventions they employ to help children cope with their emotions when upset during these early years when behaviors begin to develop.”
These findings appear to support a number of similar studies concerned with obesity and eating habits. The trend seems to buck the long-held notion that the tendency to be overweight is largely beyond the control of the individual indicating that it is due to learned behavior.
Dr Llewellyn’s comments suggest that if a person’s eating habits are out of control, the underlying cause is developmental in nature. If correct, this could mean that cognitive behavioral therapy could be a viable mode of treatment for obese adults struggling with poor eating habits.