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

Luisa Pérez,Sheryl O Hughes,Maria A Papaioannou,Marcela Vizcarra

doi:10.3390/ijerph19042027

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.

Highlights

IntroductionAmerica and the Caribbean region (LAC) is to reach the dual goals of reducing all forms of malnutrition (two indicators of it are the prevalence of stunting and overweight in children) [1]
One of the main international commitments for sustainable development in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean region (LAC) is to reach the dual goals of reducing all forms of malnutrition [1]
Latin America or the Caribbean [13,24–26]; in addition to not being conducted in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), one of these studies used a qualitative method [25]; weight status was not included as an outcome variable [27–30], and one of them studied children who were out of the age range of 2 to 12 years old [31]

Summary

Introduction

America and the Caribbean region (LAC) is to reach the dual goals of reducing all forms of malnutrition (two indicators of it are the prevalence of stunting and overweight in children) [1]. LAC has displayed a reduction in stunting in children from 22.7% in 1990 to 9% in 2019 [1], from 12.8 to 4.7 million children, while the prevalence of overweight in children changed from 6.2% in 1990 to 7.5% in 2019 affecting 3.9 millions of children [1]. Some countries are affected by different levels and types of double burden of malnutrition at the household level (i.e., mother’s overweight: Body Mass Index (BMI) ≥ 25 m/kg ; and child under five years with stunting: Heightfor-age z score < 2) such as in Ecuador (25.2%), Guatemala (48%) and Uruguay (10.7%), whereas in other countries like Chile, overweight is the main public health concern (9.3%).

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