Essentials: Eating Disorders in Early Years

Problem eating behaviours ranging from emotional undereating, overeating and binge eating have their roots in early life where eating patterns are established.  This talk will cover some of the science informing our understanding of infant feeding from nutritional wisdom to the ways that parental feeding practices might affect the infant’s appetite expression and food intake.  We will discover the ways that infants communicate liking/wanting, hunger, appetite and satiation as well as elements of responsive feeding. Guidelines on feeding in the first year of life (SACN, 2018) includes responsive feeding, and in this talk we will consider the research evidence linking the role of responsiveness to later eating disorders.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/feeding-in-the-first-year-of-life-sacn-report

The aim of this talk is to provide evidence of the ways in which early infant feeding contributes to potential eating problems in adolescence.

The specific objectives are:

a) To provide a background to the concept of early life nutritional wisdom

b) To consider the ways infants communicate appetite using examples of mealtime facial expressions and gestures

c) To identify the elements of responsive feeding

d) To uncover evidence of the ways in which early infant feeding track into later life, including the risk of developing eating disorders

After attending this course delegates will be able to…

• To define nutritional wisdom in early life
• To identify elements of infant facial expression and gesture related to appetite
• To recognise responsive feeding and its bidirectional nature using examples from video recorded mealtimes
• To apply their understanding of responsive
  feeding to practice including identifying early risk factors for eating problems and later eating disorders