Parents of picky eaters may want to pay close attention to their children’s eating habits.
New research suggests that picky eating may signal emotional troubles, according to the publication Today Online.
For the study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, researchers with Duke University reportedly screened more than 3,400 kids between the ages of 2 and 5 and found that 20 percent met their criteria for “selective eating,” according to The Huffington Post.
When the team conducted interviews to assess the children’s emotional functioning, they reportedly found that moderate and severe picky eating was linked with concurrent anxiety and depression.
“Selective eating is a marker that parents and physicians need to gather more information on,” stated William Copeland, an associate professor with the Duke University School of Medicine and an author on the study.
“Are they having other associated problems? How disruptive is this to the family?”
Those with moderate pickiness or typical pickiness, including children who just refuse to eat their vegetables, reportedly are more likely to outgrow the problem than the severe group of picky eaters. Severe selective eating is reportedly linked to a condition called avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, which was added in 2013 to the latest edition of a widely used psychiatric manual, according to the authors of the recent study.
Although only a small portion of parents need to worry about this link when it comes to their children, it’s worth paying attention to selective eaters.
“We’re not trying to set off alarms if your child just doesn’t like broccoli,”stated Copeland.
“As a clinician, a researcher and a father of three kids, I'm not overly prescriptive. If [parents] have to adapt a little bit, and their child isn't experiencing other symptoms or signs of distress, I'm not going to make an issue out of that. Hopefully this will raise awareness and help parents feel more comfortable bringing it up, and that physicians need to dig a little deeper before suggesting that they'll grow out of it and that it's of no concern.”