Abstract
Background: Adolescence is a naive juvenile age susceptible to newer stresses of lifestyle and exposure of wide variety of foods. The self-esteem of an individual starts to mount up with the development of personality as a whole.
Objectives: To determine the prevalence of food addiction and its correlation with perceived stress and self-esteem in adolescents.
Methods: An online questionnaire survey was done on 103 adolescents through over a period of 3 months from May to July 2023. The questionnaire consisted of Sociodemographic data in terms of age, gender, body mass index (BMI), type of family, Yale’s food addiction questionnaire, Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale, and Perceived stress scale. Correlation coefficient was determined between food addiction, perceived stress, and self-esteem. P-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: The study population ranged from 10 to 19 years (mean age 14.59 ± 3 years), with 71(68.93%) males and 32(31.07%) females. Food addiction was present in 35(33.98%) study population. Food addiction showed a significant positive correlation with perceived stress (r=0.268, p=0.006) and significantly negative correlation with self-esteem (r= -0.524, p<0.0001). There was no association of food addiction with sociodemographic characteristics of the study population. Food addiction was mild in 1(2.86%) patient, moderate in 22(62.86%) patients, and severe in 12(34.29%) patients. The perceived stress was significantly higher in adolescent with severe food addiction as compared to moderate food addiction (21.92 ± 4.6 vs 16.95 ± 3.27, p value=0.003) The severity of the food addiction also showed a significant association with severity of perceived stress (P=0.001).
Conclusion: Food addiction is prevalent in adolescent population and it is significantly affected by the perceived stress of the individual. Further, it also lowers the self-esteem of an individual
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