Effects of parent- and child-related behavioral feeding problems in early childhood on malnutrition

Children's responses to food and their caregivers during normal developmental periods are known as feeding behavior. For the healthy development of these behaviors, parent and child relationships must also be healthy. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the effect of behavioral feeding problems on primary malnutrition (PM). The Behavioral Pediatric Nutrition Assessment Scale (BPFAS) was administered to 300 malnourished and 300 control pediatric patients aged from 9 months to 4 years who were referred to our pediatric gastroenterology outpatient clinic. Pre- and posttreatment data were compared between the two groups. There was no statistically significant difference between patients with and without malnutrition in terms of gender and age (p = 0.191, p = 0.128, respectively). Total behavioral frequency (TBF) and total behavioral problem (TBP) scores were significantly higher in the malnutrition group (p