There are hundreds of studies and thousands of opinions, and Tom Baranowski, a professor of pediatric nutrition at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, says they’re inconclusive. He has reviewed research suggesting that there are viral prompts for childhood obesity and research suggesting that children fond of fruits and vegetables aren’t any less heavy than those mad for Mountain Dew.

Image THE BIG QUESTION What role should parents play in what children eat? Credit... Karen Kasmauski/Corbis

Dr. Baranowski’s verdict? “A lot more work needs to be done.”

Diet, it seems, is a dirty word. A Stanford University study found that a father’s projected attention to and remarks about a daughter’s weight may increase her risk of eating disorders. A University of Minnesota study found that children whose parents encouraged diets were significantly more likely to remain overweight than those whose parents didn’t.

Cynthia M. Bulik, the director of the University of North Carolina Eating Disorders Program, explained that “diet” implies deprivation, “and deprivation goes into that whole mindset that, ‘I deserve something when this is over, and this is short term.’ And it can’t be. It’s got to roll right into a lifestyle.”

Those words ring true for me. As a fat boy who ate expansively and compulsively, I went on the first of many strict diets at age 8  and thereby commenced decades of untenable regimens and compensatory pig-outs, of binging and purging.

But my outsize hunger seemed flat-out chromosomal, and my insecurity about it predated those early weight-loss schemes. Should my parents have forbidden them? What’s the best course for today’s parent, in a society where fast-food come-ons drown out Alice Waters, and models no thicker than swizzle sticks still rule fashion magazines?

“We get nutrition advice, but that’s not the same as eating advice,” said Rebecca Saidenberg, a Manhattan mother of a 16-year-old girl, referring to child-rearing tips. She said that as her daughter went through puberty, she worked particularly hard to encourage healthy habits  balanced meals, restrained portions  in the hopes of minimizing the chances of a weight problem that might follow her daughter through life.

At the same time, Ms. Saidenberg wanted to push back against “a trend of treating food like medicine.”