Behavioural Correlates of Wasting: a Pilot Satiation Study With Children Attending a Tertiary Feeding Clinic

Thinness occurs as a result of undereating, but it is not always clear why an individual child has not eaten enough, or how to get them to eat more. There is a need to understand the child characteristics that predispose to undereating and the how these operate, in order to design more effective treatment and prevention programmes. The Glasgow feeding clinic (GFC) looks after a range of children with severe feeding problems who commonly have low appetite and extreme thinness.

A Ghanaian student will come to Glasgow, funded by the Glasgow University /Scottish funding council Global Challenges Research fund, to learn these techniques to use in future PhD research. The student will conduct a pilot study of children attending the GFC. The student will invite 40 families to complete our standardised online questionnaire (ICFET) about their child's eating behaviour and collate existing growth measurements as well as their feeding history.

A standardised energy compensation study will then be undertaken in 20 of the thinnest children. At two visits at least a week apart, the children will be given one of two similar tasting drinks in random order, one with very few calories and another with extra, without them knowing which is which. After 30 minutes they will eat as much as they want of a standardized lunch. All foods and drinks offered will be weighed before and after, to calculate the amount of energy eaten in total after the low energy drink, compared to the high energy drink.