Children's eating behaviour traits and dental caries

Abstract

Objectives: This cross-sectional study aimed to assess eating behavior traits in children with or without dental caries. Methods: A sample of 580 children aged 8 years enrolled in 20 public schools in the city of Pelotas, Brazil were included. Parents/caregivers provided sociodemographic information and answered the Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) to assess eating behavior traits. This instrument possesses the subscales: food responsiveness, enjoyment of food, satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, food fussiness, emotional overeating, emotional undereating, and desire to drink. To assess the presence of decayed, missing or filled teeth (DMFT/dmft), the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria were adopted. WHO criteria were used to evaluate presence of overweight and obesity. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the mean score in each CEBQ subscale according to the different exposure variables. Linear regression was used to assess the association between dental caries and CEBQ subscales means.Results: Approximately half of the children were male (51.03 percent) and 66.73 percent had low/middle socioeconomic status. The mean DMFT/dmft was 2.41, ranging from 0 to 13, and 63 percent of the children showed DMFT/dmft > 0. After adjustments for potential confounders, children with dental caries showed higher scores on the subscales desire to drink (P = 0.03), and satiety responsiveness (P = 0.04). Conclusion:The present study showed that some aspects of eating behaviors differ in children with or without caries. Such knowledge adds to the understanding of the multifactorial etiology of caries and may help in the development of nutritional interventions to promote healthy eating behaviors, with benefits for oral health.

Associations of diet quality, food consumption, eating frequency and eating behaviour with dental caries experience in Finnish children: a 2-year longitudinal study

“…We found that desire to drink was cross-sectionally associated with higher caries experience and longitudinally associated with an increase in caries experience over two years. This observation is in line with the results of few previous studies in children (15,16) . Desire to drink does not sort out the type of drink but indicates food approach, and the association with caries may reflect the drink preferences of children.…”

“…However, there are no published reports on the association of BSDS with caries in any age group. Some eating behaviour traits, assessed by the Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ), have also been associated with caries in children (14)(15)(16) . However, to our knowledge, no studies have investigated these associations using CEBQ in populations of European children.…”

Overweight/obesity and dental caries in Brazilian children and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Tw e n t y -t h r e e s t u d i e s t e s t e d t h e association bet ween overweight and dental caries. 12,36,29,30,32,34,35,37,39,43,44,47,48,52,53,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61]66 Of these, 21 found no association between the two variables investigated in children/adolescents. 12,36,29,30,32,34,37,39,[43][44][45]48,[51][52][53][56][57][58][59][60]66 Three studies concluded that overweight children/ adolescents were less likely to exhibit dental caries than their normal weight peers.…”

“…Thirty-seven cross-sectional studies, three cohorts, and one case-control study were included. The Brazilian cities and regions where the studies had been performed were: Camboriú, Londrina, 29,30 Porto Alegre, [31][32][33] Pato Branco, 34 Pelotas, 35,36 Santa Cruz do Sul, 37 Florianópolis, 38 Califórnia 39 and Curitiba 13 in the South; Diadema, Juiz de For a, 41 Piracicaba, [42][43][44] Araraquara, 45 São Paulo, 46,47 Bauru, 48,49 Dois Córregos, 50 Araçatuba, 51 Nova Friburgo, 52 Ribeirão Preto, 53 Diamantina, 54 and Alfenas 55 in the Southeast; Goiânia 56 in the Mid-west; Acrelândia, 57 Manaus, [58][59][60] and Barcelos 61 in the North; Carauru, Cabo de Santo Agostinho, 63 Campina Grande, 64,65 Teresina, 66 and São Luis 15 in the Northeast. The studies were published between 2008 and 2021.…”

“…Nutritional status was classified based on BMI in all the studies, and the following reference curves were used to define obesity in children: National Center for Health Statistics, 5,46,62 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (NCHS/CDC), 28,29,34,42,53,63 International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), 41 WHO/20 06, 12,15,30,36,40,46,48,51,54,55,59 WHO/2007, 31,34,35,38,43,44,47,49,51,53,55-57, 60,61,64,66 Hammer et al, criteria, 52 Conde and Monteiro 37 and Cole et al 33 Six studies 28,29,34,42,62,64 assessed child and adolescent overweight and obesity using the BMI for age and gender percentiles from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2000 (CDC 2000) growth charts for children and adolescents from 2 to 20 years old (overweight: ≥ 85 th percentile < 95 th percentile, and obesity: ≥ 95 th percentile), while one paper 52 used similar parameters based on Hammer et al Ten studies used BMI for age and gender according to WHO for children younger than five years old, expressed by percentiles (overweight: ≥ 85 th percentile < 97 th percentile, and obesity: ≥ 97 th percentile) 30,48,51,54,55 or by Z-score (overweight: Z-score > 1, and obesity: Z-score > 2). [14][15][16]40,…”