School of Psychology and Counseling, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia.
Government College Women University, Sialkot, Pakistan.
Appetite. 2021 Jun 1;161:105133. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2021.105133. Epub 2021 Jan 23.
Excess weight in Pakistan's university students is on the rise and is driven by their maladaptive eating behaviours. Practitioners in Pakistan have adopted Western conceptual models to understand obesogenic eating behaviours. However, these models provide incomplete explanations as they miss important culturally specific determinants for such eating behaviours. The goals of this study were two-fold: first, to explore Pakistani university students' perception of their obesity-related eating behaviours and attitudes; second, to develop a culturally sensitive model of obesogenic eating behaviours in university students from Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews were used with twenty-four Pakistani university students who were categorised as obese using the Body Mass Index according to Asia-Specific cut-offs. Interviews were transcribed, translated, and then analysed through a Grounded Theory methodology. Six major categories emerged from interviews: (1) Obesogenic Eating Habits (Social Eating, Emotional Eating, and Eating Whatever and Whenever You Want); (2) Beliefs about Food in the Culture; (3) Neither Too Fat nor Too Thin body belief (4) Student Life Attitudes; (5) Student Stressors; (6) Inconsistent Weight-Control Strategies. A model was developed with cultural beliefs about food, attitudes towards student-life, and stressors as important determinants of students' obesogenic eating habits, while inconsistent weight-control strategies contributed to further weight gain. The findings highlight the importance of identifying culturally specific determinants of eating behaviours among university students in Pakistan. This emerging model can be used to guide the development of future quantitative and also longitudinal studies aimed at identifying targets for therapeutic interventions to manage obesogenic eating behaviours in Pakistani university students.
巴基斯坦大学生的超重问题日益严重，这主要是由于他们不良的饮食习惯。巴基斯坦的从业者采用了西方的概念模型来理解致肥胖的饮食习惯。然而，这些模型提供的解释并不完整，因为它们忽略了导致这些饮食习惯的重要文化特异性决定因素。本研究的目的有两个：首先，探索巴基斯坦大学生对其肥胖相关的饮食行为和态度的看法；其次，为巴基斯坦大学生的致肥胖饮食行为建立一种具有文化敏感性的模型。本研究使用半结构化访谈的方法对二十四名巴基斯坦大学生进行了访谈，这些学生根据亚洲特定的截断值，使用身体质量指数（BMI）被归类为肥胖。访谈内容被转录、翻译，并通过扎根理论方法进行分析。访谈中出现了六个主要类别：（1）致肥胖的饮食习惯（社交饮食、情绪饮食和想吃就吃、想什么时候吃就什么时候吃）；（2）文化中关于食物的信念；（3）不胖不瘦的身体信念；（4）学生生活态度；（5）学生压力源；（6）不一致的体重控制策略。研究建立了一个模型，其中文化对食物的信念、对学生生活的态度以及压力源被认为是学生致肥胖饮食习惯的重要决定因素，而不一致的体重控制策略则导致了体重的进一步增加。研究结果强调了在巴基斯坦大学生中识别饮食行为的文化特异性决定因素的重要性。这种新兴模型可用于指导未来的定量和纵向研究，以确定治疗干预的目标，从而管理巴基斯坦大学生的致肥胖饮食行为。
