Peer-reviewed article
Dietary guidelines for children under 2 years of age in the context of nurturing care
Rafael Pérez‐Escamilla, Sofía Segura‐Pérez, Victoria Hall Morán ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper examines dietary guidelines for children under 2 years of age, focusing on the importance of responsive feeding as part of nurturing care. Responsive feeding involves caregivers recognizing and responding to children's hunger and satiety cues during mealtimes. The authors argue that current dietary guidelines often overlook the 'how' of eating and that incorporating responsive feeding principles could improve feeding practices, weight status, and developmental outcomes. They emphasize that guidelines must be culturally adapted to different contexts and communities.
Key points
- Responsive feeding is a key dimension of responsive parenting involving reciprocity between child and caregiver during feeding
- Evidence shows responsive feeding guidance to mothers improves feeding practices, weight status, and developmental outcomes
- Early exposure to foods with different tastes and textures and positive role modelling help children learn to eat healthy foods
- Responsive feeding principles have not been comprehensively incorporated into dietary guidelines development
- Incorporating responsive feeding into guidelines requires cultural adaptation and understanding of foods and resources available to diverse communities
Limitations
This is a conceptual paper that does not present empirical data from a specific study or intervention evaluation. It discusses the potential of responsive feeding principles but does not report on the outcomes of implementing such principles into actual dietary guidelines.
Abstract
Dietary guidelines provide advice on what to eat to different subsets of the population but often do not take into account the "how" to eat. Responsive feeding is a key dimension of responsive parenting involving reciprocity between the child and caregiver during the feeding process and is characterized by caregiver guidance and recognition of the child's cues of hunger and satiety. Evidence indicates that providing responsive feeding guidance to mothers on how to recognize and respond appropriately to children's hunger and satiety cues can lead to improved feeding practices and weight status and developmental outcomes among infants and young children. In addition, early and nurturing exposures to foods with different tastes and textures and positive role modelling help children to learn to eat healthy foods. The importance of improving caregiver's responsive feeding behaviours to ensure the adequate introduction of complementary foods is becoming increasing recognized, but responsive feeding principles have not been taken into account in a comprehensive way in the development of dietary guidelines. The incorporation of all responsive feeding principles into dietary guidelines has a strong potential to enhance their impact on early childhood development outcomes for infants and young children but will require adaptation to the different contexts across countries to ensure that they are culturally sensitive and grounded in a deep understanding of the types of foods and other resources available to diverse communities.