Understanding the developmental mechanisms underlying emotional eating.

The proposed project provides the first examination of the developmental mechanisms underlying emotional over- and under-eating.

My objectives are to determine the role of parental feeding practices and toddlers’ emotion regulation strategies in [a] emotional over- and under-eating and [b] motivational approach and avoidance to different types of foods. Restrictive feeding practices are key drivers of emotional eating in early childhood, beyond any genetic influences.

Similarly, the child’s own emotion regulation strategies play a critical role in establishing healthy eating habits during feeding. Existing research is correlational and predominantly focused on school aged children.

This is surprising, given the worldwide prevalence of childhood obesity, with over 41 million children under the age of 5 being overweight or obese.

The project will follow an embodied interoceptive approach to study the developmental underpinnings of emotional eating.

First, I will determine whether caregivers who use high levels of restrictive feeding have toddlers who show changes in eating behaviour under emotional distress.

I will also test if variations in negative affectivity in these toddlers, i.e. high reactivity vs. low soothability to stressors, lead to under- and over-eating behaviours, respectively.

Second, I will examine the neural biomarkers of emotional under- and over-eating using EEG frontal asymmetries to determine the role of toddlers’ approach and avoidance to different types of food.

Identifying the mechanisms underlying emotional eating will inform intervention strategies to target obesity risk and restrictive eating behaviours, by demonstrating how changes in restrictive parental feeding and emotion regulation can alter unhealthy eating behaviours.