Childhood Obesity Prevention Training (COPT) A pre-doctoral training fellowship program at Penn State

Several sessions at SRCD 2015 focused on the importance of parenting in children’s eating behavior. One session chaired by Shayla Holub (University of Texas at Dallas) focused on how feeding practices are just one part of the greater parent-child relationship which includes both parenting style and the attachment relationship between child and parent. The discussant for the session, Dara Musher-Eizenman (Bowling Green State University) emphasized the importance of understanding bi-directional effects in the parent-child feeding relationship. Research often focuses on how parenting affects children’s eating behavior and weight, but children can also affect their parents’ feeding behaviors.

In an invited symposium titled, “Development of Food Preference and Obesity,” Julie Mennella (Monell Chemical Senses Center) and Jennifer Fisher(Temple University) described two views on how food preferences develop. First, Mennella took a strongly biological stance which emphasized the importance of early sensory experiences for the development of food preferences. Flavors that infants experience in the amniotic fluid and in their mothers’ milk can influence their later preferences. Biological responses to the basic tastes also affect how food preferences develop.

Second, Fisher emphasized the importance of eating experiences and the environment for the development of food preferences. Although she emphasized the importance of caregivers and parents for eating socialization, she also acknowledged the importance of the biological processes described by Mennella. Even though this was set up to be somewhat of a “nature vs. nurture” debate, both Mennella and Fisher agreed that both biology and environment are important for the development of food preferences.

The 2015 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting (SRCD) took place March 19 – 21, 2015 in Philadelphia, PA. This conference provided a highly multi- and interdisciplinary setting to learn about and present research addressing many domains of human development from infancy into adulthood, including research on obesity during childhood and adulthood.

The many sets of invited talks, paper symposiums, posters, and pre-conference workshops seemed reflect the growing attention to and interest in the role of early life adversities, toxic stress, and social inequality and inequity on the development of adverse health outcomes, particularly obesity.

These sessions highlighted the importance of taking a health equity perspective when studying obesity and developing intervention programs for childhood obesity such as:

• Critically examining the social, political, cultural, and economic contexts that influence individuals’ health-impacting behaviors
• Considering who is able to benefit from the interventions created and who is not
• Striving to ensure that the most disenfranchised and disempowered populations can be adequately served by services and programs

COPT fellows Katherine Balantekin and Kameron Moding, along with Drs. Jennifer Savage Williams and Leann Birch, had the great pleasure of attending an innovative IOM workshop entitled, “Examining a Developmental Approach to Childhood Obesity: the Fetal and Early Childhood Years.”

The event was held at the gorgeous Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington DC.

Mendelian genetics at the Keck Center

An illustration of science at the Keck Center

There was a heavy focus on epigenetics and microbiome, both of which are important areas to consider focusing on.

Dr. Matt Gillman chairing one of the sessions

Dr. Leann Birch introducing one of the talks

The human microbiome: our other genome

• Fun fact: did you know that the microbiome weighs ~3 pounds?
• Each body site has a site-specific microbiome, and every person has a different microbiome.

Take home points from the meeting

• We need to be cautious when extrapolating findings in animals to humans
• We need to convey the complexity of childhood obesity
• We need to assess epigenetic changes in the context of genetics
• We need to be clear about how science can benefit society
• We need more tools
• We are seeing a cascade of factors that were set into motion years ago – what markers are in pen? what markers are in pencil?
• We need to think about what we can do today to help future generations
• We need to think about what we can do today to mitigate future generations
  

  Dr. Jen Savage Williams and Katie Balantekin during a meeting break

  

  COPT fellows Kameron Moding (L) and Katie Balantekin (R) during a meeting break