Obesity Risk in Hispanic Children: The Impact of Emotional Overeating on Child Weight Trajectories

• In Event: 3-231 - The Role of Emotion in Early Childhood Eating Behaviors

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Children from minority families are at higher risk for becoming overweight/obese. Child eating self-regulation and similar appetitive traits are of interest because of their associations with child weight status. Specifically, satiety responsiveness, food responsiveness, and emotional overeating have been associated with child weight. These traits have been successfully measured using the Children’s Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ). Satiety responsiveness—ability to eat and stop eating in response to internal cues of hunger and fullness—has been associated with lower child weight across a number of studies. Food responsiveness—how responsive a child is to food and eating—has been associated with higher child weight status. However, studies on emotional overeating—eating when experiencing negative emotions or boredom—has produced mixed results. Most of these studies used cross-sectional data, thus restricting our ability to infer causal relations. The purpose of this study was to use longitudinal data to develop child BMI growth curves and investigate whether child eating self-regulation and similar appetitive traits may account for changes in child BMI over time. We used latent growth curve analyses to predict child BMI growth curves from satiety responsiveness, food responsiveness, and emotional overeating at Time 1.

Methods: A total of 187 low-income Hispanic families with preschoolers ages 4 to 5 were recruited to participate in a longitudinal study examining child eating behaviors and child weight status. Parents completed the CEBQ to assess child appetitive traits at Time 1. Staff members measured child height and weight using standardized protocols over three time points 18 months apart—ages 4 to 5; ages 5 ½ to 6 ½; and ages 7 to 8. Data on all 3 time points was available for 130 families. Child BMI z-scores were coded with the following 4-point scale: 1 = underweight (< 5th percentile), 2 = healthy weight (5th - < 85th percentile), 3 = overweight (85th - < 95th percentile), and 4 = obese (> 95thth percentile).

Results: Multiple regression predicting child weight status at Time 1 from the 3 CEBQ scales was significant. Examination of beta weights showed that food responsiveness was positively associated with child weight status and that satiety responsiveness was negatively associated. Emotional overeating was not significantly associated with child weight status. A latent growth curve model predicting the intercept and slope of BMI trajectories across the 3 time points showed that satiety responsiveness and food responsiveness predicted the intercepts of the growth curves. However, only emotional overeating predicted the slopes showing that children high on emotional overeating at Time 1 showed increases in weight status over time (Figure 1).

Conclusions: As in other studies, emotional overeating was not concurrently related to child BMI. However, this study is the first to show that emotional overeating predicted increases in weight over time. One possible explanation is that as children get older and have more freedom over their food choices, those with an early propensity toward emotional overeating begin to eat more high-calorie foods when they are distressed, thereby increasing their risk for obesity.

Authors

• Sheryl O Hughes, Baylor College of Medicine
  Presenting Author

• Thomas G Power, Washington State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jackelyn Hidalgo, Washington State University
  Non-Presenting Author