What is it about?
We know a lot about the impact of food allergies on children from a medical and nutritional point of view, but less is known about the impact of food allergies on children's eating skill development, the mealtime environment and behaviors around eating and drinking. This paper looks at what the literature currently tells us about the impact of food allergies on these areas of child development.
Featured Image
Photo by Henley Design Studio on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our findings highlight the gap in knowledge about eating skill and behavior development in children with food allergies. There is growing evidence to suggest that in younger children behaviors at meal times could be seen as the child trying to communicate fear, anxiety or pain around eating. We recommend that children with any food allergy should be screened for pediatric feeding disorder and have access to multidisciplinary care if needed.
Perspectives
I am passionate about the need for early identification and intervention for pediatric feeding disorder in the food allergy population. For many of these families, the first year of life can be difficult as they navigate managing their child's food allergies, alongside supporting the child's eating and drinking development, amongst other things. This study is the first in our program of research looking at pediatric feeding disorder in children with food allergies, I am excited to build on the evidence base to better meet the needs of this group of children and their families.
Jennifer Kefford
The University of Queensland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Feeding Characteristics in Children With Food Allergies: A Scoping Review, Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, December 2023, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2023_jslhr-23-00303.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
