A study on binge eating behavior in urban adolescents.

AIM

The study was aimed at studying binge eating behavior in urban adolescents. This was in keeping with the increasing prevalence of obesity and lifestyle disorders amongst Indian population especially in adolescent groups.

METHODS

2000 adolescents English speaking schools in Mumbai were administered the Binge Eating Scale and the Eating Behaviors and Pattern Questionnaire after assent and parental consent. The prevalence of Binge eating behavior was estimated along with the socio-demographic data and other data from scale which was analyzed using the Chi square test and ANOVA where appropriate.

RESULTS

The mean age of the total sample was 15.05 ± 1.65 years. Females reported higher Binge eating behavior than males and majority of the sample belonging to upper and lower middle- class families reported high binge eating behavior. The prevalence of Binge eating behavior was high with 1002 (50.1 %) adolescents reporting moderate binge eating while 736 (36.8 %) reporting severe binge eating. Significantly greater adolescents in the binge eating group reported irregular menses and being overweight and obese. There was a significantly greater proportion of adolescents in the binge eating group that ate out weekly and ate more fried food.

CONCLUSION

There is an increasing trend of obesity and lifestyle disorders in adolescent population that can be linked to Binge eating behavior however, the role of binge eating in context of one of the potential cause of lifestyle disorders and obesity has not been studied in Indian adolescents despite the prevalence of Binge eating and overweight being high in this population, we need further larger studies to corroborate the findings of this study.