Setting girls on a healthy diet trajectory from an early age

Dr. Megan Jarman at Aston University in the UK has undertaken the largest-ever comprehensive systematic review of the scientific literature on the diets of young children. In her review of 246 articles, she discovered that previous studies to evaluate intervention targets do not take into account the inherent complexity of factors governing the choice of what to feed children.

Dr. Jarman convened a group of key stakeholders from local governments and health services working with families with young children to conduct a system mapping workshop and identify key drivers to focus a new model on. This approach, dubbed FeedQuest, together with the information garnered from her literature review, highlighted these as being a child’s psychological traits, parental feeding strategies, and the environment during meals.

In addition to its function as a tool for collecting complex data, FeedQuest is also being developed for use in clinical settings. Indeed, Dr. Jarman is collaborating with her local community NHS trust in the UK to design a study to test its usefulness for dieticians in contact with families with children who do not have access to a wide range of foods. A grant for this work and the creation of a new version of FeedQuest is currently under review.