Does your toddler prefer sweet snacks or savory ones? It turns out that toddlers that prefer cookies over chips are much more likely to experience weight gain; in fact, they may even grow to an unhealthy weight.
In this latest study, researchers asked 209 low-income mothers to have their child fast for one hour. Then, the child was given a substantial lunch. After, the toddlers were presented with a tray of sweet treats like cookies and salty snacks like potato chips. The children were allowed to eat as much from the tray as they wanted.
"Eating in the absence of hunger is associated with being overweight among older children, but this is the first time we've seen the link in children as young as toddlerhood," said Julie C. Lumeng, one of the researchers and a behavioral pediatrician and the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. "We found that toddlers' eating sweet, but not salty, tasty foods after they already ate a filling meal puts children at a greater risk of weight gain."
Researchers found that the children between 1 and 3 years of age who ate more desserts and who became upset when the food was removed experienced gradual increases in body fat by the time they were 33 months old. This is somewhat surprising, considering that those who picked chips or other salty snacks rather than the sweet snacks didn't experience this increase in fat.
"The tendency to eat when you're not hungry increases with age and could have lifelong implications for weight gain," Lumeng said. "We need to explore ways to target this drive to eat before children even turn 3."
The new findings show that when it comes to regulating food intake, toddlers that prefer sweet over salty are more at risk of weight gain. This is especially important to note because it could help parents regulate the food that their child eats so as to avoid this issue. Not only that, but it also shows a drive to eat that researchers should investigate further in order to see whether or not there are ways to treat this particular compulsion.
The findings were published in the April edition of the journal Pediatrics.
