Submitted to: Current Obesity Reports
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/1/2016
Publication Date: 3/1/2016
Citation: Hughes, S.O., Frazier-Wood, A. 2016. Satiety and the self-regulation of food intake in children: A potential for gene-environment interplay. Current Obesity Reports. 5(1):81-87.

Interpretive Summary: Children's ability to start and stop eating when hungry or full is important when examining predictors of childhood obesity. Differences in these abilities in children have been associated with child weight status. This conceptual paper provides information on how the outside environment may impact these child behaviors with an emphasis on the role parents play in the development of children's ability to start and stop eating during eating episodes. More recent research is covered including child characteristics that are inherited that play an important role in this dynamic. Therefore, children's ability to start and stop eating when hungry or full arises from interactions between genetics and the environment. Identifying the genes and environmental influences contributing to this ability helps in tailoring parental feeding advice to the unique nature of the child. This parental advice will help in preventing childhood obesity.

Technical Abstract: Child eating self-regulation refers to behaviors that enable children to start and stop eating in a manner consistent with maintaining energy balance. Perturbations in these behaviors, manifesting as poorer child eating self-regulation, are associated with higher child weight status. Initial research into child eating self-regulation focused on the role of parent feeding styles and behaviors. However, we argue that child eating self-regulation is better understood as arising from a complex interplay between the child and their feeding environment, and highlight newer research into the heritable child characteristics, such as cognitive ability, that play an important role in this dynamic. Therefore, child eating self-regulation arises from gene-environment interactions. Identifying the genes and environmental influences contributing to these will help us tailor our parental feeding advice to the unique nature of the child. In this way, we will devise more effective advice for preventing childhood obesity.