Eating behaviour and its variability in 1-year-old children

As part of a longitudinal study of the development of eating behaviour, the naturally occurring meals of 30 12 month old children were videotaped on f our occasions, all in their own homes. Their mealtime behaviour was coded u sing a scheme developed for the analysis of feeding behaviour over the wean ing period, and summarised as counts of coded actions. Thirty of these meal s were coded independently by a second observer. With one exception, the re liability of the counts was high (r > 0.9). The median duration of the meal s was 17 min (range 1-50) and the median number of times the mother directl y gave the child food was 42 (0-172). The median number of food refusals by the child was 11 (0-89), and self feeding actions, 12 (0-101). Counts of e ating behaviour for the main and sweet courses during the same meal were on ly modestly correlated. Between subject Variance for different behaviour co unts comprised 41% to 54% of the total variance. These results show that 1 pear old children are relatively variable in their eating behaviour from me al to meal, so measures taken from a single meal will not reliably summaris e children's feeding characteristics. Food refusal is a common feature of e ating behaviour in normal children at this age. (C) 2000 Academic Press.