Research reportStress, emotional eating behaviour and dietary patterns in children
Highlights
► Children’s stress was linked with emotional eating and unhealthy dietary patterns. ► Differences in this relation may exist between different constructs of stress. ► Emotional eating behaviour did not mediate the stress–diet relation. ► Actions on stress and related eating behaviour are necessary in obesity prevention. ► This prevention should start in childhood.
Introduction
The importance of a healthy diet is widely accepted. More specifically, dietary guidelines are formulated in the prevention of obesity with a focus on high intakes of fruit and vegetables and low intake of energy dense foods like those high in fat and sugar (World Health Organization, 2003). The foundations of dietary habits are established from the ages of 3–4 years old (Singer, Moore, Garrahie, & Ellison, 1995) and may track into adolescence and adulthood (Mikkila et al., 2005, Wang et al., 2002).
An overall healthy diet consists of both a balanced food and nutrient composition as well as a balanced eating behaviour. A balanced eating behaviour comprises eating when feeling hungry, at regular moments to allow physiological growth and energy expenditure. However, a trend of eating in the absence of hunger and intermittent snacking is increasingly observed in the eating pattern in Western society. This unhealthy eating behaviour is related with unfavourable outcomes (unbalanced intake with too much fat and sugar leading to overweight in genetic at risk groups), making it pivotal to study its determinants.
Stress has been associated both with unhealthy emotional eating behaviour and an imbalanced dietary pattern (Adam and Epel, 2007, Dallman et al., 2003, Macht, 2008). However, several research gaps remain unresolved. For example it is relevant to test if stress is related with specific indices of food intake like higher consumption of fatty foods, sweet foods or both (e.g. snacks) and whether emotional eating can be seen as the mechanism underlying the assumed link between stress and an imbalanced dietary pattern. After all, emotional eating is hypothesized as a way of avoidant stress coping, eating induced stress reduction or because of the reward feelings associated with the food (Adam and Epel, 2007, Dallman et al., 2003).
Epidemiological research investigating the influence of stress on children’s diet is rather scarce and has mostly been performed in small samples, among adolescents, in laboratory conditions or focused on only one aspect of stress and mostly with indirect measures of imbalanced eating (e.g. increase in weight). As far as we know, only one study in children has included both a specific naturalistic stress measure and a direct measure of the individual’s dietary pattern (Jenkins, Rew, & Sternglanz, 2005).
Therefore, this study aims to fill this research gap by investigating the relationship between several stress measures, emotional eating behaviour and dietary patterns (sweet foods, fatty foods, snacks but also fruit and vegetables) in a sample of preadolescent children. Furthermore, the possible mediation effect of emotional eating behaviour will be tested. Especially in young children studying the role of stress on dietary intake is challenging as parents still highly control their child’s diet, while at the same time children already start to develop their own preferences.
Section snippets
Participants and general procedures
The subjects were 437 Belgian children (49.9% boys) between 5 and 12 years old participating in the ChiBS study (Children’s Body composition and Stress) in 2011. The ChiBS study examines stress and the relationship between stress and body composition development in primary school children. All children from the first to fourth year of primary schools in the Belgian city Aalter (in the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) were invited via the school to enter the study for the baseline stress
Descriptive data
As mentioned before, the principal component analysis resulted in a three factor structure for stressors. The first factor (called ‘Problems’) was positively affected by conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems and emotional problems and negatively by prosocial behaviour. The second factor (called ‘Negative emotions’) was positively affected by sadness, anger, anxiety and negatively by happiness. The third factor (called ‘Events’) was positively affected by daily uplifts, daily hassles
Discussion
This study has shown that stress in children (operationalized in three variables after PCA analyses on several stress-related questionnaires) was associated with emotional eating. Moreover, stress was also associated with an unhealthier dietary pattern (higher consumption frequency of fatty foods, sweet foods, and lower consumption frequency of fruit and vegetables). Nevertheless, emotional eating behaviour did not mediate the stress – dietary patterns relationship as emotional eating behaviour
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