Gobbling down food may play a key role in helping to pile on the pounds for overweight people, researchers warned today.
Professor Hiroyasu Iso of Osaka University, Japan, and colleagues suggest that gorging and binge eating may also play key roles. Eating quickly has previously been linked to a higher body mass index, they report on the website of the British Medical Journal.
The team investigated these factors among 3,287 Japanese men and women aged 30 to 69 years. The participants were given questionnaires to record their body mass index, their speed of eating, and whether they eat until full.
Just under half of men and just over a third of women reported eating quickly. Around half said that they ate until full. For both sexes, eating until full and eating quickly were positively associated with weight, body mass index and total energy intake.
The researchers conclude: “These eating behaviours combined may have a substantial impact on being overweight.”
In an editorial, Dr Elizabeth Denney-Wilson of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, states that this study “builds on evidence that eating behaviours are important in promoting positive energy balance”.
“We do not know what drives us to eat quickly or to eat until we are full,” she writes, but our present environment makes it difficult to regulate our energy intake. Parents may also play a role, she believes. “It seems likely that any early capacity for energy regulation may be over-ridden by parental pressure to eat more,” she suggests.
Dr Denney-Wilson urges parents to adopt “a child-led feeding strategy that acknowledges a child’s desire to stop eating”, and provide a role model of “slow and relaxed eating”.
Maruyama, K. et al. The joint impact of self-reported behaviours of eating quickly and eating until full on overweight: results of a cross sectional survey. The British Medical Journal, 2008;337:a2002.
Denney-Wilson, E. and Campbell, K. J. Eating behaviour and obesity. The British Medical Journal, 2008;337:a1926.
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