Anthropometric measures, nutritional status, cognitive restraint and emotional eating patterns in female university students

WITRIW, A.; DROLAS, M.C.; CALVIÑO, A.M.

Granada

Congreso; IUNS. 20th International Congress of Nutrition; 2013

Sociedad Española de Nutricion

Background: Cognitive restraint and emotional eating involved in eating behaviors, may modify body composition and the nutritional status. Objectives: To assess the nutritional status and body composition of university students. To analyze the possible links between measured cognitive restraint (CR) and emotional eating (EE) and nutritional reserves derived from anthropometric fractionation of body mass. Material and Methods: 175 females (24.57 +/- 3.54 years), undergraduate students at the Medical School of Nutrition and Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry of the University of Buenos Aires,were involved. Body composition was determined by the anthropometric fractionation method, consisting of 25 surface measurements (eight bone diameters, seven fat folds, eight muscle perimeters, seated and standing height). Caloric (CRv) and proteic (PRv) reserves were derived from fat/skeletal mass ratio and muscle/ skeletal mass ratio, respectively. From the three factor eating questionnaire, the CR subscale (6 items) and EE (3 items) were assessed to know eating behaviors. They have Cronbach`s alphas of 0.75. Correlation analysis, cluster analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed. Results: Both CRv and PRv normal values were shown in 41.1% of the cases (n=72), while 35.4% presented only normal CRv, 13.1% showed only normal PRv and a 10,3% showed both reserves out of standards. Thus, four clusters explained distributions of nutritional status. CRv was significatively correlated with both CR and EE scores (p < 0.01)and PRv only showed a slight correlation with CR scores (p< 0.05). ANOVA and post-hoc LSD comparisons support the effects of both EE and CR on anthropometric measures. Conclusions and implications: emotional and restraint behaviors under study are related mainly to CRv and very slightly to the PRv, we believe that diminished proteic reserve could be associated with poor food intake and/or sedentary life style Keywords: body composition, young females, eating behaviors, caloric reserve, proteic reserve