Cincinnati—In the quest to combat childhood obesity, an article and related editorial soon to be published in The Journal of Pediatrics, explore the relationship between a child’s low inhibitory control, parental restrictive feeding practices, and childhood weight gain. Restrictive feeding practices, or forbidding certain foods, may not always be the best solution. A child’s inhibitory control, a behavior similar to self-control, may be more important than parental restrictions.
In a study of 197 non-Hispanic white girls over a 10-year period, researchers at the Center for Childhood Obesity Research at Pennsylvania State University found that girls with lower self-control had higher BMIs and gained more weight than those girls who demonstrated better self-regulation. Girls with lower self-control were almost twice as likely to be overweight by the age of 15. Further, the combination of high parental restriction and low self-control put girls at the highest risk for weight gain among the group studied.
