This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Study shows link between adolescent smoking, weight concerns and dietary behaviors
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
A recent study noted that both light and heavy adolescent smokers are more likely to engage in unhealthy dietary restrictions when compared with adolescent nonsmokers.
Past studies have shown a relationship between smoking, weight concerns and other dietary behaviors in adolescents and have suggested that 15% to 40% of adolescents believe that smoking is a means of weight control.
Yale researchers used data from a cross-sectional survey of 4,523 Connecticut high school adolescents to assess the influence of gender, smoking intensity and dietary-restrictive behavior on smoking-related weight concerns. The researchers hypothesized that heavier smokers would engage in more dietary-restrictive behaviors than light and nonsmokers and adolescent smokers that endorsed dietary-restrictive behaviors would have higher weight-related smoking expectancies.
The researchers separated the students into three groups. Students were considered “nonsmokers” if they did not consume a tobacco product within the past 30 days, “lighter smokers” were smoking between one and seven cigarettes a day and researchers dubbed students smoking more than seven cigarettes a day “heavy smokers.”
The survey administered likelihood ratings of the Appetite-Weight Control Factor of the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire. Students who supported smoking were given five possible consequences of smoking and were asked to rank the likelihood of each consequence on a 10-point scale from ‘completely unlikely’ to ‘completely likely.’ The consequences were focused upon the impact of cigarettes and weight-control.
About 4,000 students submitted data to be analyzed; 3,323 students considered themselves nonsmokers, 530 were light smokers and 329 were heavy smokers.
The researchers noted that heavy smokers were significantly less likely to engage in healthy dietary restrictions than light or nonsmokers. However, both light and heavy smokers were considerably more likely to engage in unhealthy dietary restrictions when compared to nonsmokers. The data also indicated that dietary restrictions are significantly associated with smoking-related weight concerns.
The researchers noted that their findings, although limited by the cross-sectional population, have clinical propositions for smoking prevention and cessation interventions in adolescents. They suggested that adolescent smokers engage in more dietary-restrictive behaviors and may also have strong expectations about the role of cigarette smoking in assisting with weight-control. The researchers stated that further research needs to examine these relationships further in both promotion and maintenance of smoking behavior of adolescent smokers.
Cavallo D. Pediatrics.10.1542/peds.2009-2381