Mothers' prompts to eat may affect kids' weight

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children's tendency to become overweight might have something to do with how their mothers urge them to eat, a new study hints.

It showed that obese moms are no more likely than normal-weight mothers to prompt their children to eat, but the children of obese mothers are more likely to respond to these prompts.

It's possible that children of obese mothers may be more responsive to environmental cues to eat, or the cues from obese mothers could somehow be different from those given by normal-weight moms, Dr. Julie C. Lumeng and Lori M. Burke of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor write in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Maternal restriction of a child's eating has been tied to a greater risk of obesity in girls, the researchers note, but there has been less research on how a mother's urging a child to eat might influence weight.

To investigate links between maternal prompting and child compliance, as well as child and parent weight, Lumeng and Burke watched 71 mother-child pairs try four different foods, including two familiar foods (Twinkies and potato chips) and two unfamiliar foods (a Chinese moon cake and fried vegetable chips). Just over one-third of the mothers were obese, while about one in eight of the children were.

There was no difference in how frequently obese or non-obese mothers prompted the child to eat a particular food, the researchers found. However, kids with obese moms complied with their mother's prompts 70 percent of the time, compared to 60 percent of children of normal-weight women.

For unfamiliar foods, the difference was somewhat more pronounced, with 67 percent of children of obese mothers trying these foods when prompted, compared to 52 percent of children of normal-weight mothers.

Obese mothers with heavier children were more likely to prompt them to eat the novel foods, and less likely to urge them to eat the familiar foods. It's possible they saw the familiar food as "junk food," the investigators note, while perceiving the unfamiliar foods as more nutritious.

"Just as restrictive and controlling maternal feeding practices may contribute to obesity risk, so may prompting, particularly in children of obese mothers," Lumeng and Burke conclude.

SOURCE: The Journal of Pediatrics, September 2006.