Stress May Lead Kids To Unhealthy Diets
Study: Race, Socioeconomic Status Also Affect Diet
POSTED: Sunday, August 3, 2003
What do kids have to stress about? Plenty, say British researchers, and the stress affects their eating habits.
In a study of 4,320 11-year-olds, researchers from the Cancer Research UK's Health Behaviour Unit found that stressed-out kids ate more unhealthy food than their less anxious classmates and ate fewer nutritious meals and snacks.Rather than simply overeating, the stressed children munched more often on bad stuff while ignoring healthy ways to eat, according the report in the August issue of the journal Health Psychology."Children in the most stressed category ate more fatty foods and more snacks, but they were also less likely to consume the recommended five or more fruits and vegetables or eat a daily breakfast," said researcher Jane Wardle.This could be bad news down the road, the researchers said. Obesity heading into the teenage years increases the chances of being overweight as an adult, which can then lead to increased risk of heart disease, cancer or type 2 diabetes.Wardle's team asked the children to take a standard test for stress, with questions like, "How often have you felt that you couldn't control the important things in your life?"They also inquired about the students' consumption of 34 fatty food items, and how many servings of fruit and vegetables they ate each day, how often they snacked, and how frequently they ate breakfast.Wardle said the most stressed students ate nearly twice the amount of fatty foods as the least stressed group.The researchers also found that overweight students said they were less likely to eat fatty foods, snacks and breakfast. Overweight children claiming to eat less may seem contradictory, but Wardle said that obese adults typically underreport their daily energy intake, too.Ethnic identity played a role in eating patterns, too. Asian students, who made up 8 percent of the sample, ate the best diets, and black students -- comprising 19 percent -- ate the worst, with white children, who made up 62 percent of the participants, in the middle. Higher socioeconomic status was also linked to healthier eating practices.
CHILDHOOD OBESITY |
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