Correlates of picky eating and food neophobia in young children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Picky eating behavior is prevalent among toddlers and may negatively impact their growth and development. This article summarizes the correlates of picky eating and food neophobia in young children, which were identified using a socio-ecological framework. A literature search was conducted in 4 electronic databases. Inclusion criteria were English-language peer-reviewed publications that investigated correlate(s) of picky eating or food neophobia in children aged ≤30 months. Correlates were categorized into 4 levels: cell, child, clan (family), and community/country. Thirty-two studies, which examined 89 correlates, were identified from the keyword searches of the databases and manual searches of the reference lists of included articles. The most examined correlates were characteristics related to the child (sex, weight, and dietary intake) and parent (feeding beliefs and practices). A meta-analysis estimated the prevalence of picky eating to be 22%. Each additional month of a child's age was associated with a 0.06 U increase in the Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire food fussiness score. This review highlights the importance of investigating child-parent dyads and bidirectional feeding interactions and draws attention to the lack of picky eating research at the level of the cell and the community/country.