Nutrition in the News
Natalie Breuer
Article Summary
In this article titled "Parents' binge eating, restrictive feeding practices may be reactions to kids' emotions" published from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the authors focus in on why parents who participate in binge eating often restrict the diets of their children. In this study binge eating is defined as "eating unusually large amounts of food in an uncontrolled manner without compensatory behaviors such as purging" (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016). Parents who are dealing with an upset child displaying signs of anger or sadness are more likely to engage in episodes of binge eating. These same parents were also more likely to restrict the diet of their child/children. In previous studies that have been conducted restrictive behaviors by parents have been linked to health problems in their children. These health issues include, but are not limited to, children becoming overweight and overeating, even if the child is not hungry. Parents who indulge themselves in excessive food intake do not want their children to do the same. To compensate for their binge eating parents will often restrict intake of food or certain foods for their children. In this study parents who were feeling distress often engaged in binge eating. This lead to parent's restricting the child's diet. Researchers believe that the reason for the restriction on food intake is to control the child's health or to help maintain the child's weight. Two reasons for the restriction of diet were proposed in this article. One reason was that when parent's are focused on their own feelings they neglect the feelings of hunger or other emotions of the child. The second reason for restricting the diet may be that parent wants to make sure their child does not engage in the same self-destructing eating behaviors. In conclusion, the researchers of this article believe that it is important to understand the parent's feelings when looking at the child's diet. When the parent's feelings are influencing the child's diet, those feelings need to be addressed to ensure that their children are receiving adequate nutrition.
Article Critique
The article I chose was rewritten and reformatted by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The name of an exact author is not presented in this version of the article, which makes the credibility of this article questionable from the beginning. Even though the article is written by a university, it lacks the credibility that is established by having an identifiable author. Another questionable piece about this article is that this version was written by the University of Illinois, but was originally written by Sharita Forrest. By editing, shortening, and recreating this article it loses content. When this article lost part of its' content it could have been changed around and recreated to present a different viewpoint. To understand how the opinions of these new writers compare with the original author you would have to find the original and compare the pieces. At the bottom of sciencedaily.com, where I retrieved this article, there is a disclaimer warning readers that this is for information only, not to be used as medical or professional advice. This disclaimer leads me to believe that information written and presented on this website is not backed up by science or research that is proven to be accurate. When reading this article you have to keep that in the back of your mind. An article that is posted on a .com website can usually be posted by anyone, and also edited by anyone. This article would be a lot more credible if it came from a .gov, .org, or .edu source. Even though there are many things about this article that discredit it, there is one thing that is credible about it. The sources used and original author are mentioned. This allows the reader to believe what they want about the content provided, while also allowing them to check the credibility of the sources they used. If someone read this article and wanted to know more about the topic, using credible resources, they could visit a website that is ran by a university, a government website, volunteer health agency websites, and even read academic journals. All of these sources are credible and the authors almost always have credentials and scientific based evidence in their work.
References
Parents' binge eating, restrictive feeding practices may be reactions to kids' emotions. (2016, March 30). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160330122923.htm