Preschool children's interest in popular culture is linked to many determinants of obesity development including branded energy-dense foods and sedentary play using digital technologies. In addition, highly packaged foods and throwaway toys reinforce unsustainable environmental habits encouraged by immersive marketing systems. Interrupting the…

The primary aim of the present study was to cross-sectionally examine the associations between maternal psychosocial variables, child feeding practices, and preschooler body mass index z-score (BMI-z) in children (aged 2-4 years). A secondary aim was to examine differences in child weight outcomes between mothers scoring above and below specified…

Partnering early childhood education and care (ECEC) and the home together may be more effective in combating obesogenic risk factors in preschool children. Thus, an evaluation of ECEC obesity prevention interventions with a parental component was conducted, exploring parental engagement and its effect on obesity and healthy lifestyle outcomes. A…

The aim of this paper was to compare the recruitment strategies of two recent studies that focused on the parental influences on childhood obesity during the preschool years. The first study was a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of the Mind, Exercise, Nutrition?…?Do It! 2-4 obesity prevention programme and the second was a longitudinal cohort…

Obesity among children has been on the rise globally for the past few decades. Previous research has centred mainly on self/parent-reported measures examining only uni-directional parental feeding styles and practices. Recent discussions in the literature have raised the importance of bi-directional parent-child interactions in influencing…

Early childhood educators currently provide content focused learning opportunities for children in the areas of well-being and environmental education. However, these are usually seen as discrete content areas and educators are challenged with responding to children's interests in popular-culture inspired food products given these influence their…

This study extends McPhie et al. (2011)'s [Maternal correlates of preschool child eating behaviours and body mass index: A cross-sectional study. "International Journal of Pediatric Obesity", Early Online, 1-5.] McPhie et al. (2011)'s cross-sectional research, by prospectively evaluating maternal child-feeding practices, parenting style and…

Childhood obesity is a highly complex issue with serious health and environmental implications. It has been postulated that young children (preschool-aged in particular) are able to internalise positive environmental beliefs. Applying a socioecological theoretical perspective, in this discussion paper we argue that although children may…

Child obesity research has generally not examined multiple layers of parent-child relationships during weight-related activities such as feeding, eating and play. A literature review was conducted to locate empirical studies that measured parent-child interactions and child eating and child weight variables; five papers met the inclusion criteria…