Objective: To investigate if eating habits among adolescents are related to body fatness and gender.
Design: Cross-sectional study.
Setting: Obesity Unit, Huddinge University Hospital, Sweden, 2001-2002.
Subjects: Two hundred and seventy-five girls and 199 boys, aged 16-17 years.
Method: Questionnaires were used for dietary intake and meal frequency, BodPod for measuring body fatness (BF%). In all, 169 girls and 128 boys were classified as adequate reporters (AR) of energy intake, and were used in the dietary analyses. The whole sample was used in the meal frequency analyses.
Results: The correlation between reported energy intake and weight in the AR group was 0.23 (P<0.01) for girls and 0.36 for boys (P<0.001). The correlations were inverse or not significant in the whole sample. The following variables correlated significantly with a high BF% (r (s)=+/-0.2): a low intake of milk in both girls and boys, a high intake of fibre and alcohol and a low intake of sugar in girls and a low intake of breakfast cereals in boys. Those with regular breakfast habits had healthier food choices than others, but this was not related to BF%. Boys had more meals per day (4.9 vs 4.6, P=0.02), especially early in the morning and late at night, whereas girls reported a higher relative intake of light meals and fruit and a lower intake of milk than boys.
Conclusions: A few associations between eating habits and body fatness were found, but without any obvious patterns. The true differences in eating habits between lean and overweight adolescents are probably very small.