Seasonal fluctuations in food availability show a tight association with seasonal variations in body weight and food intake. Seasonal variations in food intake, energy storage, and expenditure appear to be a widespread phenomenon suggesting they may have evolved in anticipation for changing environmental demands. These cycles appear to be driven by changes in external daylength acting on neuroe...

OBJECTIVES The present study aimed to ascertain whether parental reports of their feeding practices are associated with independent observations of these behaviours, and whether the reliability of maternal report depends upon the child's weight. METHODS A total of 56 mothers and their children ate a lunch to satiety which was videotaped and coded for maternal use of control during feeding. Mo...

To understand how parents of adolescents attempt to regulate their children's eating behaviors, the prevalence of specific food-related parenting practices (restriction, pressure-to-eat) by sociodemographic characteristics (parent gender, race/ethnicity, education level, employment status, and household income) were examined within a population-based sample of parents (n=3709) of adolescents. L...

The widespread use of molecular biological tools has led to a pronounced increase in the number of signals that are now implicated in the controls of food intake and body weight. However, a complete understanding of the roles of these multiple signals requires that we assess how they interact with one another to alter ingestive behavior. Although many such experiments are being conducted, the m...

Earlier studies have shown that thwarting of feeding behaviour in the laying hen is expressed through a specific vocalisation, the gakel-call. The first aim of this study was to investigate whether the effect of deprivation per se on the occurrence of gakel-calls can be distinguished from the effect of the additional frustration. Frustration is defined as the state of an animal that results fro...

Food neophobia and picky/fussy eating behavior are presented as the two main forms of children's food rejections which are responsible for a reduction of their dietary repertoire. We review the key factors, presented in the literature, that are involved in food rejections during childhood. We first consider a range of "cognitive factors", such as food perception, mental representations, categor...

This study reports the development and validation of the 20 item Family Food Behavior Survey, a measure designed to assess broad components of the family food environment that may contribute to child overweight. In a diverse sample of 38 parents, factor analyses verified 4 domains: (1) maternal control of child eating behavior; (2) maternal presence during eating; (3) child choice, and (4) orga...

This study examined whether the longitudinal links between mothers' use of spanking and children's externalizing behaviors are moderated by family race/ethnicity, as would be predicted by cultural normativeness theory, once mean differences in frequency of use are controlled. A nationally representative sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American families (n = 11,044) was used to test ...

AgRP and POMC neurons are two key cell types that regulate feeding in response to hormones and nutrients. Recently, it was discovered that these neurons are also rapidly modulated by the mere sight and smell of food. This rapid sensory regulation "resets" the activity of AgRP and POMC neurons before a single bite of food has been consumed. This surprising and counterintuitive discovery challeng...

There is a general lack of research addressing the motivations behind parental use of various feeding practices. Therefore, the present work aims to extend the current literature on parent-child feeding interactions by integrating the traditional developmental psychological perspective on feeding practices with elements of Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT) derived from the field of motivational psy...