Emotional Eating And Obesity: Contemplating The Link

Abstract

Emotional eating is when the food is eaten to satisfy one’s feelings instead of satisfying hunger. This study aims to assess emotional eating on obese and non-obese adolescents. Non-experimental, Comparative research approach was used to achieve the objectives of the study. Researcher selected 120 adolescents studying in university by using Non probability purposive sampling technique. Result represents that Emotional eating is significantly found higher among obese individuals. Comparison of emotional eating among obese and non-obese adolescents was tested by using unpaired t test with t=5.869 at df=238 and p=0.001 indicates statistically significant at p<0.05. In this study significant difference in emotional eating among obese and non-obese adolescents with clear indication of high mean score of emotional eating in obese 43.84 in compared to 33.40 mean emotional eating score of non-obese with a mean difference of 10.44. Further findings revealed that Gender of obese adolescents was significantly associated with emotional eating at p<0.05 level of significance. Analyzing and evaluating the data collected and by comparing this to obese and non-obese adolescents, researcher found that in obese adolescents emotional eating is higher which suggests link between emotional eating and obesity.