To understand obesity as a global epidemic, it is essential to understand why individuals become and remain overweight or obese. Body weight, and correspondingly being overweight or obese, is a result of one’s genetics and energy balance. Food and beverages bring energy to the body. However, their intake occurs as a result of a variety of interacting factors, e.g. physiological, cultural, genetic, social, and behavioural ones. One aspect of eating behaviour research is to identify underlying psychological aspects of individuals’ daily food intake. In laboratory experiments, researchers have aimed to identify differences in eating behaviour between normal-weight and overweight subjects. A result of those experiments was the Three-Factor-Eating-Questionnaire (TFEQ), a widely used instrument looking at three primary aspects of eating behaviour: ‘cognitive restrained’, ‘disinhibition’, and ‘hunger’.
However, psychometric analysis of the German version of the TFEQ was based on two convenient clinical samples from 1989 and on one representative sample of younger subjects from 1990. Hence, one aim of the empirical studies within this dissertation was to provide an updated psychometric analysis of the German version of the TFEQ for a non-clinical setting in Germany. We also aimed to conduct associated analyses between the domains of the TFEQ and the BMI as the most important risk factor for common civilisation diseases. Overall, database was a large study sample from the baseline survey of the population based cohort Leipzig LIFE-Adult study.
The first study provided age- and gender-specific norms for the three TFEQ domains. Percentile ranks and T-scores for the four age groups 40-49 years, 50-59 years, 60-60 years, 70-79 years and for both men and women were published. Additionally, the study identified craving for sweets as the most common problem in eating behaviour. The published norms for the original 59-item German version of the TFEQ can be applied in clinical and non-clinical settings. Furthermore, additional information about common problems in eating behaviour might help identify general key points related to body weight modulation.
The second study analysed the factor structure of the TFEQ using both confirmatory and explorative factor analysis. Importantly, the original TFEQ factor structure was not replicated. A refined 29-item version contained three domains: ‘uncontrolled eating’ (15 items), ‘restrained eating’ (11 items), and ‘emotional eating’ (three items). The identified underlying aspects of eating behaviour are consistent with those of other studies and suggest their evidence. The highest mean BMI was found in subjects scoring high in both uncontrolled eating and emotional eating. The analysis thus confirms previous findings of the direct association between the uncontrolled eating domain and the BMI and between the emotional eating domain and the BMI. Again, this information might help identifying individual’s key problems in the challenge of maintain or lose body weight. Interestingly, in our analysis, the lowest mean BMI was found in subjects who scored low in all three of the TFEQ domains. We thus suggest that lowering the values of the three aspects of eating behaviour might be a promising approach in weight reduction programmes.
Regarding the impact of eating behaviour to the BMI, social disparities might play an important role. Thus, in our third study, we hypothesized that psychological aspects of eating behaviour might mediate the indirect association between the socio-economic status and BMI. However, our analysis revealed only weak evidence for this triangular association. Therefore, we suggest that psychological factors may be less involved in this association than other types of factors (such as financial resources).
In sum, understanding why individuals become and remain overweight or obese is of utmost importance, as the social and economic burden of excess weight is high. Psychological aspects of eating behaviour might partly explain individuals being overweight or obese. The studies within this dissertation revealed that the widely used TFEQ helps to identify subjects with a specific pattern of eating behaviour associated with higher BMI values, but might not explain social disparities in body weight. However, eating behaviour comprises a stable, long-term pattern of daily food intake. Therefore, research into eating behaviour offers the chance to identify fundamental aspects of body weight modulation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:32388 |
| Date | 06 December 2018 |
| Creators | Löffler, Antje |
| Contributors | Universität Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion, doc-type:doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 10.1016/j.appet.2015.04.044, 10.1371/journal.pone.0133977, 10.1017/S1368980017001653 |
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