Food Parenting Practices and Feeding Styles and Their Relations with Weight Status in Children in Latin America and the Caribbean.

ABSTRACT

While a growing body of literature looks at the associations between food parenting practices, and feeding styles, and child's weight status in developed countries, little is known for less developed countries, in general, and the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region, in particular. This study systemically reviews and synthesizes existing evidence on the associations between child caregivers' food parenting practices and feeding styles and 2 to 12-year-old child weight status. Keywords were used to search in PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. Among the ten eligible articles, all of them reported significant associations between food parenting practices and feeding styles and child weight status. Existing studies have limitations, mainly related to cross-sectional convenience samples, which limit the generalization of the results. Additionally, small sample, heterogeneous feeding measures and weight related outcomes were other limitations. Future research is needed to understand caregiver-child interactions in the food situation and its link to child weight status in 2 to 12-year-old children in areas of LAC with diverse forms of malnutrition and contextual factors of countries.