ONSCREEN TITLE: Queensland University of Technology, Three Minute Thesis Grand Final,
Tuesday 6 September 2:00pm
ONSCREEN TITLE: Miss Holly Harris, Faculty
of Health
ONSCREEN TITLE: Supervisory Team: Prof Lynne
Daniels (Principal), Prof Karen Thorpe (Associate),
Dr Kimberley Mallan (External)
ONSCREEN TITLE: 3rd Year PhD Student
ONSCREEN TITLE: Feeding Thing 1 & Thing 2:
Twin toddlers’ fussy eating and maternal
feeding practices
Holly Harris, PhD student: We all know that
sweet little someone who will turn the dinner
table into a battlefield.
And this, sends parents into a spiral of frustration,
guilt and inevitable surrender until they
give into their child’s demands for vegemite
on white bread, no crust, cut into perfect
isosceles triangles for breakfast, lunch and
dinner.
Meet twin toddlers Mason and Riley, or as
mum jokingly calls them, Thing 1 and Thing 2.
Mason enjoys eating EVERYTHING mum puts in
front of her.
Unlike her sibling, Riley cannot have different
foods touching on the plate, she won’t try
anything new and only eats ‘white’ coloured
foods.
But none of this matters, because tomorrow
she will hate everything she liked today.
Why do twins who are brought up in the same
household together, eat so differently?
Is it mum contributing to these differences
between Mason and Riley through how she feeds
each twin?
Or, is she simply responding to nuances between
the twins that has already been written into
their genes?
Now, “fussy” eating is the tendency to
reject a large proportion of new or familiar
foods and is associated with reduced dietary
variety and poor food preferences.
Previously, it was thought that coercive parental
feeding practices exacerbated children’s
fussy eating.
However, recent evidence suggests that fussy
eating is likely to be genetically inherited.
So we still don’t fully understand how parent
feeding or child eating works in this circumstance.
In my PhD research, I wanted to understand
parents’ role in fussy eating.
I collaborated with world-class researchers
at University College London where I worked
on ‘Gemini’
– a large UK birth cohort of 2402 twins, aiming
to assess the genetic and environmental influences
on child diet and early growth.
Looking at the Gemini twins, I found that
if twins differed in their fussy eating, mum
was more likely to pressure and use food bribes
with the fussier twin.
However, mum’s restriction of sugary and
fatty foods were similar for both twins, indicating
certain ‘food rules’ in the house, despite fussy eating.
So, my findings suggest that Mason and Riley’s
mum was more likely to adapt some of her feeding
practices, based on each twin’s fussy eating.
My PhD research will continue to understand
how both mums and dads perceive, and respond
to, fussy eating.
Findings from this research will set the scene
for future early feeding interventions, supporting
parents in managing food refusal and improving
children’s dietary quality.
Because parents, like Mason and Riley’s
mum and dad, are not the problem, but a part
of the solution in de-stressing dinnertimes.
Thank you.
