Certain food and feeding policies used by parents might play an important role in childhood obesity, researchers say.
A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis noted that certain parental practices - like restricting kids from eating certain foods or compelling them to "clean their plates" - can interfere with their healthy growth, CNN Health reported.
The findings, reported April 22 in Pediatrics, come at a time when the country is struggling hard to fight childhood obesity. According to the American Obesity Association, about 30.4 percent teenagers are overweight, and 15.5 percent are obese.
To reach a conclusion, Katie Loth and colleagues looked at more than 2,200 teens aged 14, and 3,400 parents. They used data from two studies. In the first study, EAT 2010 (Eating and Activity in Teens), researchers collected information about the food habits and weight of the participants using questionnaires.
The information thus collected was compared with data contained in another study - Project F-EAT (Families and Eating and Activity Among Teens).
Children who were restricted from eating certain foods were either overweight or obese.
"Research has shown that when a parent places a restriction on a particular food item (i.e. no treats) that a child becomes more interested in consuming that food item and will often overeat that food when given the opportunity. Instead, parents should be encouraged to allow their children to eat all foods in moderation," lead author of the study, Katie Loth, told CNN.
On the other hand, a significant number of parents (between 50 and 60 percent) reported forcing their children to finish all the food even after they were full.
Children who were forced to finish their food even after they were full were of normal weight, but according to the researchers, it could increase their risk of gaining unnecessary weight later.
"Parental pressure to eat can be detrimental to children because it takes away from a child's ability to respond naturally to their own hunger," Loth said to CNN. "Instead, (it) encourages them to respond to cues in their environment which can lead to unhealthy weight gain over time."
Concerned with the trend, researchers urged parents to manage their children's weight through other methods like family meals, providing nutritious and freshly cooked food, Medpagetoday reported.
