U of M Research: Fewer Teen Girls Using Unhealthy Weight Control

MINNEAPOLIS - Fewer teenage girls are engaging in unhealthy weight control behavior, according to public health researchers at the University of Minnesota.

The trends emerged from data collected by the University of Minnesota’s Project EAT, which recorded the dieting, eating and physical activity habits of adolescents. The study compared approximately 3,000 adolescents in 1999 to a similar number in 2010 to plot trends in obesity and weight-related attitudes and behaviors.

That research has turned up some good news and some bad news: Unhealthy weight control behavior among teen girls is steadily improving as obesity rates fall. But researchers also found obesity rates climbing among minority teen boys.

“Over the past decade a lot of public health attention has been directed toward both obesity and eating disorders,” said Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., M.P.H, the principal investigator for Project EAT. “We wanted to find out what happened during the past decade to see if some positive changes had occurred and to identify the scope of problems that still need to be addressed.”

For girls, dieting decreased 6.7 percent, unhealthy weight control behaviors like skipping meals and using food substitutes dropped 8.2 percent and extreme weight control behaviors like self-induced vomiting dropped 4.5 percent.

Obesity rates for girls increased slightly, from 16.3 to 19.1 percent.

“The data suggest that social norms around dieting and unhealthy weight control behaviors are showing some improvements,” Neumark-Sztainer said. “We’d like to think it’s because the weight-related culture in girls is getting a little bit better. Perhaps efforts from the eating disorders community and research findings showing that dieting and unhealthy weight control behaviors are not effective in weight management are having an impact.”

For minority boys, obesity spiked 7.8 percent for all boys, topping out at 26 percent, with large disparities among ethic groups. Obesity rates climbed from 14.4 to 21.5 percent among black boys, 19.7 to 33.6 percent among Hispanic boys and 21.2 to 33.5 percent among Asian boys. White boys held steady around 18 percent.

“What our analysis finds is that obesity prevention messages may not be reaching these boys,” Neumark-Sztainer said. “The findings suggest a real need for improved public health outreach to those populations.”

Project EAT is funded by a grant from the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute.