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2014, 2015 & 2016
Nominated/ won Astonishing Academic Awards (most supportive academic,  best personal tutor, and  most motivational academic, Life and Health Sciences, Aston University).

Astonishing Academic Award

Highly Commended for the Intellectual Property Award for the Child Feeding Guide, Loughborough University

Winner of Social Enterprise Award for the Child Feeding Guide, Loughborough University

Highly Commended for the Best App for the Child Feeding Guide, Loughborough University

Nominated for the Rosalind Franklin Appathon Competition

UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowships (UKRI FLF) Programme : Member

Senior Fellowship of Higher Education Academy : RITE Mentor

Higher Education Academy : Senior Fellow

British Psychological Society : Associate Fellow

Midlands Universities Children and Infants eating Group : Committee Member

National Steering Group for Children’s Feeding : Committee Member

British Feeding and Drinking Group : Member

Using repeated visual exposure, rewards and modelling in a mobile application to increase vegetable acceptance in children

Weight-management in children living with asthma: a qualitative study of the experiences of paediatric healthcare professionals

Unpacking the relationships between positive feeding practices and children's eating behaviours: The moderating role of child temperament

Making connections: Social identification with new treatment groups for lifestyle management of severe obesity

Do perceived norms of social media users’ eating habits and preferences predict our own food consumption and BMI?

Dr Claire Farrow is interested in the factors that influence eating behaviour and weight gain or weight loss, particularly in children. She has expertise in longitudinal research and in using observational and experimental designs. Claire is particularly interested in the impact of parental feeding practices on children’s food preferences and in the role of family mealtimes. She is interested in the development of eating behaviour and weight in Low and Middle Income Countries and is currently collaborating with partners in Kenya and Zambia. Claire has expertise in using digital interventions to support child eating behaviour and has co-developed the 'Child Feeding Guide' website and training resource for parents and professionals and 'Vegetable Maths Masters' app for children and teachers to support healthy eating behaviour. 

Claire is a Chartered Psychologist, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

Observational Research

Child Obesity

Child Eating Behaviour

Fussy Eating

Digital Health Interventions

Aston University Research Page

ResearchGate Citations

Google Scholar Citations

Child Feeding Guide

Vegetable Maths Masters

Fussy Eaters: Calming the Meal-time Battleground

Fussy eaters, Parliament that works for women, Passing for white, Terri White - editor-in-chief Empire magazine

Fussy eating—and parents' stress—remedied by online guide

Social media users 'copy' friends' eating habits

The end of fussy children? New smartphone game helps youngsters eat their greens by linking vegetables with rewards

Exploring Language Use at Family Mealtimes in Kenya; Lessons for Early Child Development and Education Centers

Understanding How Complementary Feeding Method Longitudinally Affects Developmental Outcomes in Young Children

A Longitudinal Evaluation of the Impact of Digital Games for Increasing Acceptance of Green Vegetables Over Time

Vegetable Maths Masters evaluation

A school closer to home: the role of mealtimes in fostering language development and aligning home and school learning in rural Kenya and Zambia

aston-university-research-finds-that-social-media-can-be-used-to-increase-fruit-and-vegetable-intake-in-young-people

Professor, Deputy Head of School of Psychology and Associate Dean for Research in College of Health & Life Sciences

 The research team asked one group of participants to follow healthy eating accounts and another to follow interior design accounts After just two weeks, participants following healthy eating accounts ate more fruit and vegetables and less junk food Even minor tweaks to social media accounts could result in substantial diet improvements in young adults.  Researchers from Aston University have found that people following healthy eating accounts on social media for as little as two weeks ate more fruit and vegetables and less junk food.

Previous research has shown that positive social norms about fruit and vegetables increases individuals’ consumption. The research team sought to investigate whether positive representation of healthier food on social media would have the same effect. The research was led by Dr Lily Hawkins, whose PhD study it was, supervised by Dr Jason Thomas and Professor Claire Farrow in the School of Psychology.

The researchers recruited 52 volunteers, all social media users, with a mean age of 22, and split them into two groups. Volunteers in the first group, known as the intervention group, were asked to follow healthy eating Instagram accounts in addition to their usual accounts. Volunteers in the second group, known as the control group, were asked to follow interior design accounts. The experiment lasted two weeks, and the volunteers recorded what they ate and drank during the time period.

Overall, participants following the healthy eating accounts ate an extra 1.4 portions of fruit and vegetables per day and 0.8 fewer energy dense items, such as high-calorie snacks and sugar-sweetened drinks, per day. This is a substantial improvement compared to previous educational and social media-based interventions attempting to improve diets.

Dr Thomas and the team believe affiliation is a key component of the change in eating behaviour. For example, the effect was more pronounced amongst participants who felt affiliated with other Instagram users.

The 2018 NHS Health Survey for England study showed that only 28% of the UK population consumed the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. Low consumption of such food is linked to heart disease, cancer and stroke, so identifying ways to encourage higher consumption is vital. Exposing people to positive social norms, using posters in canteens encouraging vegetable consumption, or in bars to discourage dangerous levels of drinking, have been shown to work. Social media is so prevalent now that the researchers believe it could be an ideal way to spread positive social norms around high fruit and vegetable consumption, particularly amongst younger people. 

Dr Thomas said:

“This is only a pilot intervention study at the moment, but it’s quite an exciting suite of findings, as it suggests that even some minor tweaks to our social media accounts might lead to substantial improvements in diet, at zero cost! Our future work will examine whether such interventions actually do change our perceptions of what others are consuming, and also, whether these interventions produce effects that are sustained over time.”

Dr Hawkins, who is now at the University of Exeter, said:

“Our previous research has demonstrated that social norms on social media may nudge food consumption, but this pilot demonstrates that this translates to the real world. Of course, we would like to now understand whether this can be replicated in a larger, community sample.”

Digital Health DOI: 10.1177/20552076241241262 

Aston University research finds that social media can be used to increase fruit and vegetable intake in young people

aston-institute-of-health-and-neurodevelopment-hosts-showcase-event-to-highlight-research-expertise

Professor of Psychology

  Research showcase held to highlight research underway at the Aston Institute for Health and Neurodevelopment  Researchers met with local clinicians and funding bodies to talk through their latest developments The event will take place each year with a plan to invite guests back to update them on how the institute has progressed.  Aston Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment (IHN) held its inaugural research showcase event on Thursday 7 July at Conference Aston. 

The yearly event is an opportunity to highlight its research projects and meet with the Institute’s external partners, funding bodies and professional colleagues. 

Guests were invited to join IHN’s research and teaching team to learn more about its vision and hear about individual research projects currently underway. 

The centre’s co-directors Professor Jackie Blissett and Professor Gavin Woodhall talked about IHN’s vision which includes:

•    unlocking the potential of research to support child health and development 

•    answering the questions that matter to children and young people, their families and the services that support them

•    developing the next generation of research leaders in child health and development. 

Researchers working on projects including treatments for drug resistant epilepsy, childhood eating behaviour, improving support for people with rare neurogenetic conditions and diagnosis of paediatric brain cancer using magnetic resonance imaging and artificial intelligence met with external partners and clinicians to talk them through their latest projects and developments. 

The event was also attended by Aston University Interim Vice-Chancellor, Saskia Loer Hansen, Executive Dean of the College of Health and Life Sciences, Anthony Hilton and other members of the University executive team, together with academic researchers in the University’s College of Health and Life Sciences.

There was also an opportunity to meet all the Institute’s researchers, ask questions and network. 

Professor Jackie Blissett, co-director of Aston Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment,  said: “After a successful launch of our new £2.8 million MRI scanner earlier this year, it is great that we were able to come together again and showcase all of our research that goes on in IHN, particularly to our external partners, including local clinicians and funding bodies.   “This is our inaugural research showcase and we plan to invite guests back to Aston University each year to update them on how the institute has progressed with its research. “As a research institute that puts children and young people at the heart of what we do, it is important to be in touch with all of our partners from a cross section of the community to update them on all of our latest developments and find ways to collaborate further – particularly in clinical settings.”  For more information about research being undertaken at AIHN please go to our website. If you are interested in the courses we have available in this area please go here. 

Aston Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment hosts showcase event to highlight research expertise

preschool-childrens-emotional-eating-partly-shaped-by-innate-food-drive-research-

  New research at Aston University is helping to unpick the complex connections between the eating habits of children and their mothers.

The research, by PhD student Rebecca Stone, surveyed 185 mothers of young children aged between three and five, asking about their eating habits and those of their children. The findings are published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Children pick up lots of behaviours by copying their parents – and this is true of their eating habits as well. The aim of the new research was to see how much of children’s emotional eating is explained by the way mothers use food as part of their parenting practices as well as the children’s own attitudes to food more generally.

‘Emotional eating’ is when we turn to food, such as cakes, chocolate and snacks, not because we’re hungry but to compensate for when we’re feeling sad, low or anxious. The survey included questions for mothers about how much they and their children ate in response to emotional states. It also asked about how much children were motivated by food and driven to eat or ask for food throughout the day, which is known as ‘food approach’ behaviour.

Stone also asked mothers about the feeding practices that they used with their children – in particular about whether they used food to reward children for good behaviour, or visibly restricted their child’s access to foods, for example having foods in the house but forbidding them. These practices have been shown to make children more interested in food and have also been linked to greater emotional eating in children.

When Stone analysed the responses, she found that children who were very motivated by food were more likely to pick up emotional eating behaviour from their parents. Stone used a complex statistical method, known as moderated mediation analysis, to decipher how the different aspects of the relationship interacted: emotional eating in the mother, how she parented the child around food, the child’s food approach tendencies and emotional eating.

Professor Claire Farrow, who was one of Stone’s PhD supervisors at Aston University, said: “This study demonstrates that the way that children develop eating behaviours is very complex, and that emotional eating appears to be shaped in part by an innate drive towards food. "In this study we found that parenting practices interact with children’s eating tendencies and that children who are the most driven to approach food are the most influenced by feeding practices that can lead to emotional eating. These findings suggest that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to child feeding isn’t always appropriate and that some children are more susceptible to the influence of behaviours that can lead to emotional eating.”    Stone agreed: “Our findings suggest that children who were more motivated to eat were more predisposed to associate food with emotions. Our research supports the idea that emotional eating is a learned behaviour which children often develop in pre-school years, but that some children are more vulnerable to developing emotional eating than others”  Although common amongst parents, the research also highlights that using food as a reward or visibly restricting the child’s access to certain foods - even in children as young as three – can be problematic. Giving a piece of chocolate as a reward or telling children they can only have one biscuit as a ‘treat’ is likely to create an emotional response in the child which they then connect to those foods.

Stone said: “The research suggests that restricting food in front of children who are already more motivated by food tends to backfire and makes children crave restricted foods even more. What seems to work best is known as ‘covert restriction’ -  not letting children know that some foods are restricted (for example, not buying foods that you do not want your child to eat) and avoiding instances where you have to tell children that they are not allowed certain foods.”   The researchers suggest parents looking for practical advice on healthy eating and fussy eating should check out the Child Feeding Guide, a free online resource created by Professor Claire Farrow, Professor Emma Haycraft & Dr Gemma Witcomb at Aston and Loughborough Universities.




Pre-school children’s emotional eating partly shaped by innate food drive - research 

Free and advert free app for children aged 3 to 7+ years to play maths games with vegetables.

Vegetable Maths Masters app

https://www.childfeedingguide.co.uk/ Real strategies and tools to tackle fussy eating and create happy mealtimes - we have created this resource to share evidence-based information, tips and tools with parents and professionals to help establish healthy eating in children. Visit our website to access our free tools and low cost training courses - https://www.childfeedingguide.co.uk/

Child Feeding Guide - support for parents and professionals

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