Poster #64 - Children’s physiological markers of stress and emotional eating behavior during mealtimes

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Emotional eating is the use of food as a coping strategy to deal with negative emotions and stress (Shriver et al., 2019). Emotional eating behavior is linked to undesirable outcomes including high intake of energy-dense foods (Jalo et al., 2019) and obesity (Shriver et al., 2019) in childhood and adolescence. Up to 63% of children and adolescents engage in emotional eating (Shriver et al., 2019); an alarming percentage given that emotional eating behavior may indicate a pathway toward obesity and is an antecedent of binge eating (Vandewalle et al., 2016). Children’s emotional eating also increases in prevalence from early childhood to preadolescence (Ashcroft et al., 2008). As such, early identification of children at-risk for emotional eating is needed. Understanding individual factors that contribute to emotional eating in childhood could inform these efforts.

Stress is linked to eating behavior in adults (Sominsky & Spencer, 2014) but research on stress and eating behavior with children is sparse. Stress exposure activates two physiological pathways, the most rapid of which is the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) axis, which responds through neural and endocrine routes to increased heart rate and skin conductance. Previous research has indicated that higher heart rate (HR) is associated with obesity in children (Rossi et al., 2015), and higher skin conductance level (SCL), or electrical conductivity of the skin, is associated with disordered eating in adulthood (Tchanturia et al., 2007). As part of an ongoing clinical trial, we examine physiological markers of stress reactivity (HR and SCL) in relation to children’s emotional eating behavior during mealtimes.

The Intervention Nurses Start Infants Growing on Healthy Trajectories (INSIGHT) study tested a responsive parenting intervention designed to reduce rapid infant weight gain against a safety control. The interventions were delivered to primiparous mothers from shortly after their child’s birth through child age 2 years; children are now 9 years old and observational data collection is ongoing (n=87 participants to date; up to n=172 expected to complete data collection by April 2023). At the 9-year timepoint, children’s physiological markers of stress reactivity (HR and SCL) are being collected with Empatica E4 wristbands capturing high-resolution photoplethysmography. HR and SCL data surrounding children’s eating will be extracted and processed using R 3.6.2. Children’s emotional eating is being collected with ecological momentary assessment surveys during self-reported mealtimes using mobile phones that ask what children are eating and how intensely they are experiencing various emotions (e.g., sad, happy, angry, annoyed, overwhelmed, anxious). Emotional eating data from mealtime surveys will be analyzed using SAS 9.4. Time-varying effects modeling will examine associations between children’s HR and SCL with mealtime survey data on a subsample (n=20) of children. Specifically, at the conference, we will report:

(1) How emotional eating was operationalized using mealtime survey data
(2) Descriptive statistics on variability of children’s HR and SCL around mealtimes
(3) Whether/how HR and SCL fluctuate throughout mealtimes classified as “emotional eating”
(4) Whether/how HR and SCL fluctuate throughout mealtimes not classified as “emotional eating”

This project has been pre-registered on AsPredicted.org (#107568).

Authors

• Erika Hernandez, BInghamton University
  Presenting Author

• Lisa M. Gatzke-Kopp, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Orfeu M. Buxton, The Pennsylvania State University

• Ian M. Paul, Penn State College of Medicine

• Jennifer S. Savage, Pennsylvania State University