Treating children with food can cause a lifetime of weight problems parents are warned

Parents are being warned that giving children food as a reward or treat could lead to a lifetime of weight problems.

According to a survey of more than 2,000 people by Slimming World and YouGov, adults who remember being given food as a reward when they were children became caught up in psychological problems with food, bad diet choices and using high calorie food to help them deal with stress.

They were also more likely to have low self-esteem and tried extreme weightloss methods including starving and making themselves sick.

Obesity Researcher for Slimming World, Dr James Stubbs says: “The occasional sweet or treat isn’t going to cause children problems in the future, even if those treats aren’t particularly healthy. It’s when parents repeatedly use high calorie foods as a quick way to appease their children when they’re upset or to quieten them down when they misbehave that they begin storing up future problems for them. In these instances parents can unwittingly create an association in the minds of their children that leads to them using high calorie foods as a way to make themselves feel better right into adulthood, where the link becomes even more deeply ingrained.”