Kristy Carlisle

Food addiction is a proposed cause of the obesity epidemic in the United States, where 25% of our children are overweight. These children experience any number of immediate medical consequences of their obesity: orthopedic, neurologic, pulmonary, gastroenterologic, endocrinologic, hormonal, metabolic, and cardiovascular. Their medical concerns follow them into adulthood when their risks for cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, and dyslipidemia are significantly increased. Beyond their medical distress, these overweight children also experience psychosocial consequences, including difficult peer relationships, negative self-esteem, depression, and decreased quality of life. Prevention and treatment of food addiction has the secondary positive effect of potentially lowering the obesity rate and saving children from the dangers of compulsive excessive eating behaviors, regardless of a diagnosis.

Food addiction, as currently understood by research, has behavioral and neurochemical expressions that can be attributed to the effects of parents, family, environment, and culture. My three previous blogs have focused respectively on parental, family, and environmental influences that may breed food addiction in children. This blog outlining the research on the influence of culture really emphasizes the concept of learned behaviors that become ingrained in children’s lives. As multiculturally trained counselors, we understand that body image development occurs within a cultural context, where attitudes about eating habits, food preparation, and dietary guidelines clearly influence the ways children learn to approach food and eating behaviors. Little research has been published on specific cultures, except for a few articles on Latina and Haitian mothers. However, socioeconomic status is presented as a serious demographic force that could be breeding food addiction in the pediatric population.

So far, while briefly conveying my research on food addiction, I have addressed the parental and family influences that potentially breed disordered eating in children. This blog attests to research that ties certain environmental influences to the dangerous effects of children’s disordered eating. These environmental influences concern trends in physical activity, increased stress, the media, changing food markets, and changes in the labor force.

In my last blog I described research attesting to the potential parental influences on children’s addiction to food. This blog expands on the topic of protecting children from food addiction by discussing the impact family dysfunction and family food environment can have on children’s attitudes and behaviors regarding food.

So, if food addiction exists, and not everyone believes it does, what are the possible influences that could breed the problem in children? My research shows parental, familial, environmental, and cultural influences at play. These influences stem from known causes and correlations concerning obesity, addictions and eating disorders, and they can be applied to the disordered eating food addiction implies. In this blog, I’d like to share my findings on potential parental influences on food addiction in children, focusing on the parents’ own psychopathology, obesity, and attitudes and behaviors regarding food and eating.