Study to assess therapy for feeding difficulties in kids

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDMay 6 2010

It is a common complaint of many mothers that their children refuse food. Now Australian scientists are looking for answers to this problem in order to reduce the increase in the number of malnourished children who need medical help because of their picky eating.

Research shows that many growing children and nearly 85 percent of disabled children had feeding difficulties that often necessitated addition of nutritional supplements, therapy for development of oral motor skills like chewing and sometimes even tube feeding.

Scientists believe that malnourishment among children is on the rise because of multiple factors. One of them could be the increased survival of premature high risk babies who may be delayed developmentally. Too much junk food and nutritionally poor fare could also be the reason.

This study involves around 300 children at the Children's Nutrition Research Centre at the University of Queensland. There will be trial intervention to feeding methods as utilized by feeding disorder clinics all over Australia. This study according to one of the research fellows at the centre, the Healthy Eating Learning Program, Dr Pamela Dodrill would be the first randomized controlled trial that will test feeding methods. It may show which child or parent targeted method can be effective in improvement of the child's nutritional status. She said that it is important that feeding problems are diagnosed early before more damage is done. Earlier research findings show that feeding problems during infancy and in toddlers can lead to adult diseases like diabetes, stroke, heart disease and cancers. The idea of feeding in the initial years should be good nutrition as opposed to just weight gain which most parents believe. This belief leads to encouragement of junk foods.

She went on to say the parents of poor feeders are often not advised well. Many of them turn to clinics outside Australia for their problem. These are unauthorized and often unevaluated. Some may cost up to $30,000 per program. These use coercive techniques which often fail to bring long term health benefits to the child she added.

There will be three approaches to the problem and over all cost effectiveness and benefits will be assessed based on these –

1. Nutritional advice and counseling
2. Rewarding tactics to be tried on children
3. Exercises to develop oral motor skills for biting, chewing, swallowing etc.

There will be two major groups also. One group will be coached in a once weekly fashion and another in an intensive method of three times a day for five days.