Nurturing Needs Study: Parenting Food Motivated Children

Deconstructing Food Parenting Approaches to Obesity Prevention for the Highly Food Motivated Child

High food motivation among children is trait-like and increases risks of unhealthy dietary intake and obesity. Scientific knowledge of how parenting can best support healthy eating habits and growth among children who are predisposed to overeating is surprisingly limited. This investigation will identify supportive food parenting approaches for obesity prevention that address the needs of highly food motivated children.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Pediatric Obesity; Parenting; Diet, Healthy; Eating Behavior
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Measurement

Detailed Description

High levels of food motivation among young children are heritable, track over time, and associated with elevated risks of unhealthy eating and obesity. Despite significant growth of family-based obesity prevention efforts, the evidence base is remarkably scant on parenting highly food motivated children to prevent obesity and poor dietary outcomes. The goal of this investigation is to generate a robust basic science evidence for parenting highly food motivated children to prevent excessive dietary intakes and body mass index (BMI) gains during the preschool years. Using a prospective cohort design, this investigation follow 205 caregiver/child dyads over 18 months as children transition from preschool to elementary school, when significant numbers of children begin to experience problems of poor diet quality and obesity. Children with varying food motivation will be recruited to understand whether highly food motivated children have different needs than other children. A multi-method approach will use state-of-the-art measures, including ecological momentary assessment, to comprehensively investigate the amount, types, and consistency of food parenting practices (i.e., specific, goal-oriented behaviors) needed to prevent food motivated behaviors, excessive dietary intake, and BMI gains in children. Specifically, the role of structure (i.e., theoretically supportive) and its differentiation from more coercive types of food parenting control will be comprehensively characterized.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 416
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Christina Croce, MS; Phone Number: 215-707-8672; Email: christina.croce@temple.edu
• Study Contact Backup: Name: Nilda Micheli, BS; Phone Number: 713-798-6737; Email: nildam@bcm.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • Pennsylvania
    • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 19140
      • Recruiting
      • Temple University - Center for Obesity Research and Education
      • Contact: Christina Croce, MS; Phone Number: 267-428-7893; Email: nurturingneeds@temple.edu
  • Texas
    • Houston, Texas, United States, 77030
      • Recruiting
      • USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center
      • Contact: Nilda Micheli, BS; Phone Number: 713-798-6737; Email: nildam@bcm.edu

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Study Population

A community-based convenience sample of Black and Hispanic preschool aged children (4-5 y) and their primary caregivers will be recruited in Philadelphia, PA and Houston, TX.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Child ages 4 or 5 years at baseline;
2. Parent/ primary caregiver with legal representation (having 50% or more custody of child);
3. Parent/primary caregiver reporting primary responsibility for child feeding outside of childcare (being with child when they are eating at least two times daily);
4. Caregiver with a cell phone that can be used to send and receive text messages. If there is more than one age-eligible child in the family, we will ask the caregiver to pick the index child.

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Parent/primary caregiver <18 years of age;
2. Child history of major food allergies (e.g., peanuts);
3. Child medication use (e.g., insulin), developmental disability (e.g., autism) or medical condition(s) (e.g., diabetes) known to affect food intake and growth;
4. Foster child.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Other: Caregiver-child dyads; A cohort of 205 caregivers and 205 children aged 4-5 years at baseline will be recruited and followed longitudinally for 18 months.	Other: Measurement; The only interventions are at the measurement level and consist of two behavioral protocols designed to assess children's eating behavior, where food stimuli are provided and children's behavioral responses are recorded.; Other Names: Eating in the absence of hunger; Relative reinforcing value of food

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Excessive dietary intakes	Indicators: SFAS intakes and meal/snack sizes estimated from 24-hour dietary recalls	Baseline, 18 months
BMI change	% of the 50th percentile per age- and sex-specific CDC reference values for BMI on a log scale	Baseline, 18 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Observed food motivated behaviors	Indicators: Eating in the absence of hunger and relative reinforcing value of food	Baseline, 18 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Temple University
• Collaborators: Baylor College of Medicine; University of Minnesota
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Sheryl O Hughes, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine; Principal Investigator: Jennifer O Fisher, PhD, Temple University

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Buttner C, Skupin A, Reimann T, Rieber EP, Unteregger G, Geyer P, Frank KH. Local production of interleukin-4 during radiation-induced pneumonitis and pulmonary fibrosis in rats: macrophages as a prominent source of interleukin-4. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 1997 Sep;17(3):315-25. doi: 10.1165/ajrcmb.17.3.2279.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 7, 2023
• Primary Completion (Estimated): October 31, 2027
• Study Completion (Estimated): October 31, 2027

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 26, 2023
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 26, 2023
• First Posted (Actual): November 1, 2023

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimated): November 5, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 3, 2025
• Last Verified: November 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Nutrition Disorders; Overnutrition; Body Weight; Overweight; Obesity; Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms; Behavior; Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases; Signs and Symptoms; Behavior, Animal; Pediatric Obesity; Feeding Behavior; Investigative Techniques; Diet, Food, and Nutrition; Physiological Phenomena; Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; Digestive System Physiological Phenomena; Digestive System and Oral Physiological Phenomena; Weights and Measures; Eating
• Other Study ID Numbers: R01DK132642 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract); 30291 (Other Identifier: Temple Institutional Review Board)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: Research data generated by the project will be supported by TUScholarShare (https://scholarshare.temple.edu/), the institutional repository for Temple University. This is a repository service that is managed by the Temple University Libraries and uses Open Repository, an enhanced DSpace platform that is hosted by Atmire. TUScholarShare has been developed with the intent of helping researchers comply with grant-funding agency requirements. It enables dissemination and long-term preservation and curation (management, use, and re-use) of data.
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: Within two years of completion of the study

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

Researchers will work with the University Libraries Research Data Management Services staff to facilitate the deposit of data into TUScholarShare, and to ensure appropriate metadata and complete documentation of the data to maximize the ability to understand and reuse the data. The data will be published in TUScholarShare for long-term preservation, using services such as file format migration where possible, persistent identifiers (DOIs), persistent Web addresses (handles), and checksums.

TUScholarShare data resides in two locations, a local Isilon storage system and an off-site cloud-based service, Open Repository. Open Repository's AWS cloud storage service provides extended infrastructure, which includes a production server, test server, fallback servers, data backups, and full system backups

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No