Psychosociocultural Contributors to Maladaptive Eating Behaviors in African American Youth: Recommendations and Future Directions

Maladaptive eating behaviors and health-related quality of life in Spanish children

In children, assessing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and identifying the factors that can influence it are essential to understanding their overall health and well-being. Although eating disorders in children have been associated with reduced HRQoL, the impact of maladaptive eating behaviors, such as external eating, emotional eating and restrained eating, on children's HRQoL has not yet been prospectively explored. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether external, emotional and restrained eating at baseline was associated with HRQoL in children after 14.65 months (95% CI: 14.57-14.73) of follow-up. The study involved 690 boys and 681 girls aged between 8 and 10 years, recruited from primary schools in Catalonia (Spain). To assess the relationship between external, emotional and restrained eating behaviors at baseline and HRQoL at follow-up, the Dutch Eating Behavior and KIDSCREEN-10 questionnaires were used, respectively. After adjusting for sex, age, intervention allocation group, school, maternal education, zBMI and physical activity, external and emotional eating behaviors at baseline were negatively associated with HRQoL at follow-up (p < 0.01). These associations were attenuated after final adjustment for HRQoL at baseline. Furthermore, a composite score of maladaptive eating behaviors at baseline was created by summing the individual scores for emotional, restrained and external eating behaviors. This composite score showed a significant inverse association with HRQoL at follow-up, even after adjusting for baseline HRQoL (p = 0.024). In conclusion, external and emotional eating behaviors seems to negatively affect HRQoL prospectively in Spanish children. The composite score of maladaptive eating behaviors showed a stronger inverse association with HRQoL than each eating behavior individually. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN registry: ISRCTN68403446; Date of registration, August 01, 2014 'Retrospectively registered'.

Altered resting-state functional connectivity of medial frontal cortex in overweight individuals: Link to food-specific intentional inhibition and weight gain

Numerous findings from functional neuroimaging research suggest that overweight may be associated with alterations in reactive inhibition. However, there is a dearth of research investigating the functional connectivity that mediates intentional inhibition in overweight individuals. To explore this issue, 55 overweight and 45 normal-weight adults completed an assessment consisting of a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan, a behavioural task measuring food-specific intentional inhibition, and a 1-year longitudinal measurement of BMI change. A seed-based approach was employed to examine the group-difference of the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the medial frontal cortex (MFC) (dorsal fronto-medial cortex [dFMC], pre-supplementary motor area, and premotor cortex) regions involved in intentional inhibition. Compared with normal-weight adults, the overweight individuals exhibited higher rsFC between the MFC seeds and (i) cerebellum, (ii) postcentral gyrus, (iii) middle temporal gyrus, and (iv) posterior cingulate cortex, while lower rsFC strength were observed between MFC seeds and (i) putamen and (ii) insula. The overweight individuals with higher dFMC-cerebellum rsFC strength showed poorer performance in food-specific intentional inhibition and gained more weight a year later than those of normal-weight participants. Results suggested that altered functional connections between MFC and regions associated with reward and maladaptive eating may be key neural mechanisms of food-specific intentional inhibition in overweight status. Therefore, individuals are encouraged to make informed decisions about their health and reduce their consumption of obesogenic foods from the perspective of intentional inhibition.