Parents are key players in the prevention and treatment of weight-related problems.
There is growing agreement among experts that an obesogenic environment, which encourage excess food intake and idealizes thinness, plays a crucial role in the epidemic of childhood obesity and eating disorders. Because parents provide a child's contextual environment, they should be considered key players in interventions aimed at preventing or treating weight-related problems. Parenting style and feeding style are crucial factors in fostering healthy lifestyle and awareness of internal hunger and satiety cues and de-emphasizing thinness. Effective interventions for prevention and treatment of weight-related problems should be approached from a health-centered rather than a weight-centered perspective, with the parents as central agents of change. This paper reviews the environmental risk factors and parents' role in the prevention and treatment of children's weight-related problems.
School of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences, Rehovot, 76100, Israel.
Moria
M
Golan
Scott
S
Crow
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002664:Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D004777:Environment; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D013851:Thinness