Children’s emotional eating tied to parents

Controlling parents who are slow to respond to their children’s needs may be fuelling emotional eating in their children who turn instead to food for comfort.

The reasons why people emotionally eat will come under the microscope today at the Psychological Society of Ireland annual conference in Kilkenny where clinical psychologist Dr Jonathan Egan will discuss how parental behaviour can have a lifelong bearing on a child’s relationship with food.

An online study carried out by Dr Egan and lead author clinical psychologist Róisín Finnegan found different parenting styles influenced whether a child had a positive or negative relationship with food.