Binge-eating, a disorder that can lead to obesity in young women, can be predicted by looking at a girl's negative emotions, including dissatisfaction with her body image, new data confirms. Only certain negative emotions, however, were linked to an increased risk of binge eating. "Heightened depressive symptoms and emotional eating, as well as low self-esteem, but not anxiety symptoms and anger, predicted binge eating onset," says Eric Stice, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, writing in the current issue of Health Psychology.
Similarly, not all types of social support were linked to binge eating. Low peer support increased a girl's risk, but low parental support did not have any effect. Teenagers' risk of binge eating was not related to their age, ethnicity or level of parental education.
Binge eating, in turn, was linked to an increased risk of becoming obese.
One out of every four adolescents in the United States is obese, and the incidence of obesity in this age group has doubled over the past 30 years.
Stice looked at more than a dozen measures of self-esteem, depression or eating behaviors and found that they could predict binge eating with 92 percent accuracy.
Based on the results of this study, Stice suggests that it might be useful for prevention efforts to attempt to reduce girls' perception of the importance of their appearance as well as working on their overeating tendencies.
The study followed more than 200 girls enrolled in the ninth or tenth grade at two unidentified private high schools in northern California. The students ranged in age from 13 to 17 at the start of the two-year investigation. Four percent of the girls are African American, 20 percent Asian, 65 percent Caucasian, 2 percent Hispanic, 1 percent Native American and 8 percent listed themselves as "other."
The girls answered survey questions concerning their dieting history, weight, height, emotional symptoms and social support network.
At the start of the study, 34 of the girls reported that they had engaged in at least one episode of binge eating. Of the remaining 191 students, 22 (12 percent) acknowledged in a resurvey 10 or 20 months later that they had engaged in at least one incident of binge eating.
