Is dieting behaviour decreasing in young adolescents?

Abstract

Objective: To report trends in underweight, overweight and obesity in 12-15-year-old adolescents and examine changes in dieting behaviour, which have been less well documented. Design: Comparison of two independent representative cross-sectional surveys. Setting: Northern Ireland. Subjects: Weight and height were objectively measured in 1324 boys and 1160 girls in 1996 and 1274 boys and 1374 girls in 2007. Participants reported whether they were following any particular diet including a self-proposed or prescribed weight-reduction diet. Results: Overweight and obesity increased in girls from 15 % to 23 % and 2 % to 6 %, respectively. Increases were more modest in boys with overweight increasing from 13 % to 18 % and obesity from 3 % to 6 %. The proportion of underweight adolescents decreased from 9 % to 6 % in girls and 8 % to 5 % in boys. Evidence of social disparity was observed in girls from a manual socio-economic background, with overweight/obesity prevalence rates increasing from 21 % to 36 % compared with 15 % to 26 % in girls from a non-manual background. Despite these trends fewer adolescents, in particular girls, reported following weight-reduction diets (14 % of overweight/obese girls in 2007 v. 21 % in 1996; 8 % of boys in 2007 v. 13 % in 1996). Of these girls, the proportion from a manual background following weight-reduction diets decreased from 25 % to 11 %. Conclusions: Overweight and obesity are continuing to increase in adolescents despite government and media awareness strategies. There also appears to be reduced dieting behaviour, despite increasing body weight, particularly in girls from manual socio-economic backgrounds.

Body composition and eating behaviours in relation to dieting involvement in a sample of urban Greek adolescents from the TEENAGE (TEENs of Attica: Genes & Environment) study

“…The present results also showed that adolescents who were dieting at the time of the survey or who had dieted in the past had significantly higher BMI and body fat percentage than those who had never dieted, in both sexes. These results are consistent with other findings showing that overweight and obese individuals will more often engage in dieting in order to control their weight than normal-weight individuals ( 6 , 34 , 35 ) . However, dieting has been shown to be prevalent among normal-weight adolescents as well; and it has been related to self-perceived weight status and body image distortion ( 36 ) .…”

Trends in child and adolescent obesity prevalence in economically advanced countries according to socioeconomic position: a systematic review

“…Whittle et al (51) reported trends in underweight, overweight and obesity among young adolescents in Northern Ireland for the period 1996 to 2007. Their data illustrated rising rates of overweight and obesity among low and high obesity reviews SEP children.…”