Controlling feeding practices moderate the relationship between emotionality and food fussiness in young children.

Emotional child temperament has consistently been found to be related to food fussiness. One factor that may exacerbate or reduce the risk conferred by children's emotionality is parent feeding practices during mealtimes. Specifically, the use of controlling feeding practices aimed at increasing food consumption may particularly affect children with an emotional temperament. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether the association between child food fussiness and higher emotionality found in previous studies is moderated by maternal use of controlling feeding practices, namely verbal pressure, physical prompts and food rewards. Sixty-seven mother-child dyads were video-recorded during a meal in their home and mothers' use of controlling feeding practices during this meal were coded. Mothers completed a questionnaire assessing child temperament. Moderation analyses revealed that maternal use of verbal pressure and physical prompts moderated the relationship between higher emotionality and food fussiness, but maternal use of food rewards did not. These results indicate that the use of verbal pressure and physical prompts may have a particularly negative influence on fussy eating for children higher in emotionality.

Behavioural validation of a parent-report measure of child food fussiness.

Food fussiness is the rejection of familiar and novel foods leading to consumption that is insufficient and/or inadequately varied. Its importance to children's nutrition and the development of food preferences means it has been the focus of extensive research. To measure food fussiness, research has predominantly relied on parent-report, though parents' reporting of their child's eating behaviour can be reliable, responses may also be subject to bias. Utilising data from video-recordings of sixty-seven mother-child dyads during a meal in the home environment, this study aimed to validate the most widely used parent-report questionnaire measuring food fussiness against independent observations of children's eating behaviour and, in so doing, determine its accuracy. Maternal reported food fussiness, assessed using the Food Fussiness subscale of the Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ; Wardle, Guthrie, Sanderson, & Rapoport, 2001) was compared to children's observed food rejection and acceptance behaviours. Bootstrapped Pearson's correlations revealed that maternal reports of food fussiness were significantly positively related to food rejection behaviours and significantly negatively related to food acceptance behaviours. Maternal reports of food fussiness were also found to be significantly negatively related to the proportion of familiar/appealing of familiar foods consumed by the child. There was no significant association between maternal reported food fussiness and the proportion of familiar/unappealing, unfamiliar/appealing and unfamiliar/unappealing foods consumed by the child or the meal duration. These findings support the CEBQ FF as a valid measure of food fussiness.