How Do Kids Become Emotional Eaters?

The research behind raising children with healthy and intuitive eating habitrs

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Emotional eating is so ingrained in our society that it is often not considered abnormal or problematic. No one would bat an eye if you told them you were so nervous that you couldn’t stop eating chips or that you were so sad that you ate an entire carton of ice cream. Yet, most parents would not want to pass this habit on to their children. So is there anything that you can do? Research provides some insight into why emotional eating is so common and what parents can do to teach their children eating habits that are better for their physical and mental health.

What Is Emotional Eating?

Emotional eating is any eating that occurs in response to emotions. Emotional eating is usually not driven by hunger or feelings of fullness but rather internal emotional states. It often occurs with the purpose of distracting from emotions or coping with negative emotions, but can also occur in response to positive emotions. Common emotions that elicit emotional eating include anxiety, sadness, boredom, loneliness, and insecurity. Emotional eating is very common among both adults and children. Research finds that up to 63% of children engage in emotional eating.

Why Should We Care about Emotional Eating?

Given how common and accepted emotional eating is, you might be wondering whether it really matters. Research suggests that it does, since emotional eating likely puts children at risk for eating disorders and unhealthy eating practices. Research finds that emotional eating is linked with disordered eating and body image issues. Researchers have found that, when they use an intervention to reduce emotional eating, body image also improved. Research has also linked emotional eating to eating more sweet/salty foods and sugary drinks. Research consistently finds that the opposite of emotional eating, intuitive eating (translation: eating based on hunger and stopping when you feel full) is linked to better mental and physical health.

The Development of Emotional Eating

What is really interesting about emotional eating is that researchers do not believe that we are born emotional eaters. Our nervous systems are actually designed to shut down digestion in times of high emotion so that our body can focus on escaping danger rather than needing to eat. Imagine running from a predator and having to stop for a snack and you will understand why emotional eating doesn’t make sense— we should want to eat less during times of high emotion. Yet, this often is not the case.

For this reason, researchers believe that emotional eating is a learned behavior rather than something we are hardwired to do and genetic research backs this up. Research on the development of emotional eating in children further backs up this theory. Research finds that preschoolers are more likely to undereat in response to emotion and overeating in response to emotion becomes gradually more common from age 4 to 10 years. Researchers speculate that children learn to associate emotions with eating when they are consistently paired together. This line of research should be empowering since it suggests that parents may be able to prevent children from developing this habit.

How Do Children Learn Emotional Eating?

Research has consistently found that parents play an important role in the eating habits that their children develop. Research has found that parents may engage in “emotional feeding” (feeding your children in response to their moods) which is then linked to higher rates of emotional eating. This is particularly common in children who are more prone to bad moods as parents will feed them in order to improve their mood (“Here have a snack. That will help you to cheer up”).

Research (see here and here) also finds that parents who use controlling eating practices are more likely to have children who are emotional eaters. These practices include:

• Using food as a reward (“If you get ready for school on time every day this week, you will earn a lollipop!”)

• Offering food in emotionally charged situations (for example, when your child has separation anxiety so you give them a cookie whenever they are leaving them)

• Using food to regulate a child’s emotions (for example, using their favorite food to distract them or help them to cope with negative emotions)

• Using food to encourage or discourage certain behaviors (“If you are good at dinner you will get a dessert”)

• Restricting food for health reasons (this could include not allowing certain foods even in moderation because they are “unhealthy”; this strategy tends to backfire)

Research suggests that when parents use these practices they are teaching their kids to use eating to regulate emotions instead of coping strategies that actually work.

Overall Translation

Emotional eating is extremely common and linked to unhealthy outcomes for both physical and psychological health. Research finds that emotional eating may be a learned behavior and that parent feeding practices may encourage or discourage its development. However, like so many studies in the parenting research world, these studies are only correlational— meaning that we still do not know whether these parenting feeding practices cause emotional eating or are just associated with it.

However, this research suggests the following research-backed ways you can help your child to avoid becoming an emotional eater and develop healthier eating habits:

1. Be careful about how you talk about food: Help your child to see food as a source of nutrition and energy, not a source of emotional comfort

2. Teach mindful eating: Teach your kids to focus all of their senses on eating whenever possible. Try to avoid allowing them to watch TV or read while eating. Ask them questions that help them to engage their five senses while eating, such as asking them what their food looks like, feels like, and smells like. Encourage them to eat slowly, letting the food remain on their tongue for a minute before chewing or swallowing. Ask them to pay attention to how hungry they are before and after eating.

3. Practice division of responsibility: Division of responsibility is an approach to feeding your kids that allows them to learn how to tune into their own body. According to this model, parents decide what, when, and where food is served and children decide how much they want to eat or if they want to eat at all.

4. Allow all foods in moderation: Do not ban certain foods and do not label foods as “healthy,” “unhealthy,” “good,” or “bad.” Research finds that strategy is likely to backfire since children will become more preoccupied with the forbidden food over time.

5. Examine your own beliefs and practices related to food: Do you ever use food as a reward or a comfort? How much of your eating depends on hunger cues versus external cues? Try to change your own eating habits and model that for your child. If you are struggling with your own eating habits, see a registered dietitian who specializes in intuitive eating.

6. Teach and practice healthy coping skills: Teach your child healthy ways to manage their emotions instead of using food. First, you want to figure out which coping skills work best for your child. Some examples include deep breathing, going to a “calm down space,” using positive self-talk, listening to music, or talking about how they feel. Then practice these skills when your child is calm. When they are upset, remind them of their coping skills and coach them through how to employ these skills effectively.

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Welcome to the Parenting Translator newsletter! I am Dr. Cara Goodwin, a licensed psychologist with a PhD in child psychology and mother to four children (currently a 1-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old, and 9-year-old). I specialize in taking all of the research that is out there related to parenting and child development and turning it into information that is accurate, relevant, and useful for parents! I recently turned these efforts into a non-profit organization since I believe that all parents deserve access to unbiased and free information. This means that I am only here to help YOU as a parent so please send along any feedback, topic suggestions, or questions that you have! You can also find me on Instagram @parentingtranslator, on TikTok @parentingtranslator, and my website (www.parentingtranslator.com).

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