Question from the Riverside Team asked 3 years ago
Are there any studies currently underway into the affects on a child or baby who has had COVID 19 in connection with feeding?
Riverside Cares Staff answered 3 years ago
There is lots of ongoing research into the impacts of COVID-19 and how this has impacted families and babies/young children. It is going to be really interesting to understand the outcomes. There are already studies published of the impact of COVID-19 on breastfeeding (see here, for example one of the many studies https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mcn.13088) but more work is needed to understand the impact on feeding children solids.
An interesting occurrence that has been noted is that COVID-19 often brought increased opportunities for families to eat together, which is likely to be a good thing, but it also brought challenges, such as increased food insecurity and troubles accessing food. On the flip side it gave fewer chances for children to eat with others (peers, family members etc) which means fewer role models for them to learn from.
Another area which it impacted on was how much exercise a child got and how much fresh air. For some families, it may have meant doing more exercise but for some children involved in team sports and swimming it may have decreased their activity.
Children are generally very resilient characters so hopefully, COVID-19 won’t have caused too many lasting impacts on children’s eating habits.
Kind regards
Emma and Jill
http://www.riversidetrainingcompany.co.uk
https://www.childfeedingguide.co.uk/