Restrained eating in overweight children: does eating style run in families?

Overweight children show abnormalities in eating style, such as restrained eating and tendency toward overeating (comprising both emotional and external eating). Family surroundings play a major role in developing eating behaviors in children. We tested whether restrained eating and tendency toward overeating predicted the amount of food intake in 41 overweight children (23 girls and 18 boys) and their parents (40 mothers and 11 fathers) after receiving a preload. We further investigated with questionnaires whether there were associations between the parents' and their children's eating behavior and whether mothers' food intake predicted the amount of food consumed by children in an experimental trial. We found that neither children with restrained eating nor their mothers ate more after a preload, but children with a high tendency toward overeating ate somewhat more after receiving a preload. Further analyses showed that children's food intake in the preload paradigm was predicted by mothers' food intake. Our findings point to a familial transmission of eating styles: children eat as their primary caregivers do, even when the caregivers are not present in the laboratory.