Effect of eating habits on obesity in adolescents: a study among Chinese college students

Abstract

Objective Obesity has been linked to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and osteoarthritis. Obesity and overweight pose a serious threat to human health, with an estimated 190 million overweight and obese people worldwide. Thus, we investigated the influence of certain eating habits on weight among Chinese college students. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 536 college students in Shijiazhuang, China. The survey included questions about eating habits. We analyzed the relationship between participants’ responses and obesity. Results Sex, residence, speed of eating, number of meals eaten per day, and a diet high in sugar were found to be correlated with obesity. Our results suggest that increasing the number of meals per day, slowing down the pace of eating, and reducing the intake of high-sugar foods have potential benefits for reducing obesity among college students. Conclusions In the present study, we found that some dietary habits are related to the occurrence of obesity among college-aged individuals.

Self-Reported Eating Speed Is Associated with Indicators of Obesity in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…A total of 4523 studies in four different databases were scanned for inclusion in this systematic review. After the elimination process (Figure 1), a total of six [42,[50][51][52][53][54] longitudinal studies and fifteen [43][44][45][46]48,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] cross-sectional studies were included. Eighteen articles [42][43][44][45][46][50][51][52][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] studied the general population, while three [48,53,54] included subjects with noncommunicable diseases, such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes.…”

“…After the elimination process (Figure 1), a total of six [42,[50][51][52][53][54] longitudinal studies and fifteen [43][44][45][46]48,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] cross-sectional studies were included. Eighteen articles [42][43][44][45][46][50][51][52][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] studied the general population, while three [48,53,54] included subjects with noncommunicable diseases, such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Figure 3a illustrates that the majority of the reviewed articles were from Asian countries, i.e., 71% from Japan (fifteen studies) [42][43][44][45]…”

“…Eighteen articles [42][43][44][45][46][50][51][52][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] studied the general population, while three [48,53,54] included subjects with noncommunicable diseases, such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Figure 3a illustrates that the majority of the reviewed articles were from Asian countries, i.e., 71% from Japan (fifteen studies) [42][43][44][45][50][51][52][53][54][55]58,59,61,63,64] and 16% from China (three studies) [48,57,62]. Figure 3b shows the distribution of research by eating speed categories.…”

“…Most studies have used three categories in different variations: slow or slowly, normal, moderate or medium and fast or quickly. Five studies [51,52,57,61,64] combined categories after data collection due to the low variability of the final responses (Table 1). A meta-analysis was completed on five comparable studies.…”

“…Table 2 summarises the design and results from articles on the relationship between eating speed and obesity indicators in the general population. Table 2 presents eighteen studies conducted in the general population, of which fourteen are cross-sectional studies [26,28,40,54,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63], and four are longitudinal studies [25,51,53,55]. All articles presented in Table 2 found a significant relationship between eating speed and BMI.…”