Development of eating behavior and its relation to physical growth in normal weight preschool children.

In order to examine whether some characteristics of eating behavior are related to physical growth and weight increment in young children, a longitudinal prospective study was conducted. The eating behaviors of 11 age-matched normal-weight preschool children were observed at lunchtime on 18 consecutive days. The same set of observations was carried out three times when the children were 40, 52 and 59 months old, on average. MANOVA procedures for repeated measures design revealed that the eating behavior of the subjects changed considerably between the first and second observation stages, whereas it did not change significantly between the second and third stages. It was considered that eating behaviour developed mostly between the first and second observation stages and that the subjects were able to eat completely independently by the second observation stage. The increment in the children's weight per month began to show individual variation at the age of 48 months between the first and second observation stages. Coincidentally, the relationship between eating behavior and physique first appeared at the second observation stage and a similar relationship was observed at the third stage. The partial correlation coefficients and the multivariate multiple regression of MANOVA were performed for this analysis. Meal duration was the factor most strongly related to weight and BMI, whereas in contrast, growth history and familial factors influenced the eating behavior at the first observation stage. The present results indicate that eating behavior was one of the factors related to the rapid increase in weight soon after or just at the time of initiation of complete self-feeding in normal-weight children.