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 Children with severely selective eating habits were more than twice
as likely to be diagnosed with depression or social anxiety than
kids who consumed a wide variety of foods, the study found.
Even moderately selective eating was linked to some psychological
difficulties. These kids were more likely to have symptoms of
depression, anxiety and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
than children with more varied diets.
“This is not a simple story of indulgent parents or bratty kids,”
said lead author Nancy Zucker, director of the center for eating
disorders at Duke University. “These are children who are profoundly
sensitive to their internal and external world – so things smell
stronger and they may have more intense feelings.”
It's normal for young children to go through a period when they are
wary of unfamiliar foods or refuse to consume more than a handful of
different items, though most kids outgrow this during elementary
school. It isn't necessarily harmful as long as the children
maintain a healthy weight for their height, pediatricians say.
For the current study, Zucker and colleagues questioned caregivers
of 917 children aged two through five.
Selective eating was common, with up to about 20 percent of parents
reporting their preschoolers exhibit this behavior much or all of
the time, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.
Among the kids with selective eating, 185 had moderate aversions to
foods that led to a restricted diet, and another 37 had severely
restricted eating habits that limited their ability to eat with
others.
Levels of selective eating were linked to aversion to food and
reduced growth, as well as heightened sensitivity to the texture,
smell and appearance of food.
About two years after the first interviews, the researchers checked
back with 187 children and their parents and found that kids with
selective eating were 1.7 times more likely to have increased
symptoms of generalized anxiety levels.
One limitation of the study is that it relied on parents to
accurately report how their children ate and approached food, the
researchers acknowledge.
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Even so, the study adds to a growing body of evidence linking picky
eating to sensory processing difficulties, said Helen Coulthard, a
psychology researcher at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K.
who wasn’t involved in the study.
Some amount of pickiness is normal, and parents should be careful
not to become overly anxious about how their kids eat as long as
children grow and gain weight at a normal pace, Coulthard said by
email.
She urges that the study by interpreted cautiously and says it’s
important not to frighten parents about their children’s eating
behavior. “Many children who are selective/picky from childhood
gradually widen the repertoire of food they accept, especially when
confronted with social situations where their behavior is frowned
upon,” she said.
Still, parents should also recognize that picky eating can have a
real psychological impact even in early childhood, Myles Faith, a
nutrition researcher at Gillings School of Public Health at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said by email.
Avoiding mealtime battles is key when working to help picky eaters
expand their diet, said Faith, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“The more frustrated parents get, the more they might try to
control,” he said. “Tensions surrounding feeding, if sustained over
years, could promote child anxiety or depression.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1SWOT3F Pediatrics, online August 3, 2015.
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