Adolescent health briefThe Effect of Television Viewing on Adolescents’ Snacking: Individual Differences Explained by External, Restrained and Emotional Eating
Section snippets
Methods
A nationwide sample of 10,087 Dutch undergraduates aged 11–16 years (M = 13.0, SD = .8) were recruited through their schools; the total response of participating schools was 91.9%. Details of the selection procedure are described elsewhere [19].
The number of sweet and/or savory snacks respondents usually ate per day measured snacking. This item was derived from a larger food intake questionnaire and had been used in an adolescent sample before. Television viewing on a regular school day
Results
Table 1 shows TVV per group of subjects; differences were found between age, educational level and ethnic groups, but not for gender (Table 1).
TVV was negatively associated with physical activity (r = −.06 for boys, and r = −.10 for girls, p < .001) and positively associated with snacking (r = .25 for boys, and r = .21 for girls, p < .001).
Adolescents who scored high on external eating ate more snacks than those who scored low on external eating (t(4810) = −15.95 for boys, and t(5042) = −19.54
Discussion
This study provides tentative evidence that external, restrained and emotional eating might play a role in the association between TVV and snacking, confirming our hypothesis that high external and emotional eaters had stronger associations between TVV and snacking. Interestingly, the interaction between TVV, emotional eating and snacking was only significant for boys; these sex differences need further investigation. Possibly, in certain people both heavy TVV and emotional eating might be the
Acknowledgment
Rutger Engels was supported by a fellowship of the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research during the preparation of this manuscript. We thank Roy Otten and Monique van de Ven for their work during the preparation of this study and during the data collection, and Hedwig Lahnstein for text revisions.
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