Eating Behaviors, Caregiver Feeding Interactions, and Dietary Patterns of Children Born Preterm: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Infants born preterm (<37 weeks of gestation) often experience feeding problems during hospitalization. Whether difficulties persist or have long-term sequelae on childhood eating is unclear. We aimed to describe the oromotor eating skills (e.g., chewing/swallowing), eating behaviors (e.g., food neophobia), food parenting practices (e.g., pressure to eat), and dietary patterns of preterm children during late infancy (6-12 mo) and early childhood (>12 mo-7 y) and to determine whether these differed from those of term-born peers. We identified 67 articles (57 unique studies) for inclusion. We used random-effects meta-analysis of proportions to examine the prevalence of oromotor eating skill and eating behavior challenges among preterm children, standard meta-analysis for comparisons with term-born peers, and the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach to assess the certainty of evidence. Forty-three percent (95% CI: 24%, 62%) of infants and 25% (95% CI: 17%, 33%) of children born preterm experienced oromotor eating difficulties and 16% (95% CI: 4%, 27%) and 20% (95% CI: 11%, 28%), respectively, exhibited challenging eating behaviors. During late infancy and early childhood, oromotor eating difficulties (OR: 2.86; 95% CI: 1.71, 4.77; I2 = 67.8%) and challenging eating behaviors (OR: 1.52; 95% CI: 1.11, 2.10; I2 = 0.0%) were more common in those born preterm than in those born term: however, the certainty of evidence was very low. Owing to the low number and heterogeneity of studies, we narratively reviewed literature on food parenting and dietary patterns. Mothers of preterm infants appeared to have heightened anxiety while feeding and utilized coercive food parenting practices; their infants reportedly received less human milk, started solid foods earlier, and had poorer diet quality than term-born peers. In conclusion, meta-analyses show preterm children experience frequent oromotor eating difficulties and challenging eating behaviors throughout the early years. Given preterm birth increases risk of later obesity and diet-related chronic disease, research examining the effects of caregiver-child interactions on subsequent diet is warranted. This review was registered at www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/ as CRD42020176063.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.017 | 0.028 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".