Managing Emotions More Effective than Boosting Wellbeing in Curbing Teens' Sweet Tooth

Is managing emotions more effective than boosting wellbeing in curbing teens' sweet tooth? A recent study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity explored whether emotion-driven impulsiveness or psychosocial well-being contribute more to healthy or unhealthy food choices. Their findings indicate that an intervention that targets emotion-driven impulsiveness would be slightly more effective in reducing adolescents' consumption of sweet and high-fat foods. Background During childhood and adolescence, environmental factors play an important role in eating behaviors and food choices. During this age, individuals may respond to negative emotions and stress by eating unhealthy foods that activate the brain's reward system and make them feel better. However, this emotion regulation strategy is maladaptive since it can lead to health outcomes such as obesity and other issues. Emotional well-being has been associated with making healthier food choices. At the same time, more impulsive individuals may be more likely to consume unhealthy foods when they are stressed or upset. Thus, emotion-driven impulsiveness could mediate the relationship between emotional well-being and food-related decision-making. While these relationships have been explored using correlational studies, previous research could not establish a causal impact. About the study In this study, European researchers explored whether an increase in psychosocial well-being or a decrease in emotion-driven impulsiveness is more effective in improving food choices made by European adolescents. In a separate analysis, they also assessed to what extent impulsiveness mediates the effect of emotional well-being on food choices. Researchers used data from the pan-European IDEFICS/I.Family cohort which collected data from eight countries in Europe. Four waves of data were collected between 2007 and 2021. Participants were 2-9 years old during the first wave of data collection in 2007-2008. The sweet propensity score was calculated as the number of high-sugar food and drink items consumed each week and divided by the total number of food and drink items consumed, multiplied by 100. A similar formula was used for scoring fat propensity. Emotion-driven impulsiveness was scored between 0 and 48, with a higher score indicating more impulsiveness when individuals experienced negative emotions. The 'low' exposure category was for individuals in the 12-20 range, while 'moderate' indicated a score of 21-28 and 'high' a score of 29-48. Psychosocial well-being included four subscales – relations to friends, family life, self-esteem, and emotional health and was scored out of 48, with 9-35 being 'low,' 36-40 'moderate,' and 41-48 'high.' Sex, age, country of recruitment, BMI z-score, physical activity, sleep quality, and media use were included as covariates. The researchers conducted a causal analysis using the potential outcomes framework, estimating causal impact through machine learning algorithms and Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation (TMLE).