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Obesity alert
Photo: Mohd Yousuf
Diet forecast High-fat diet seems the weakest predictor of obesity
For adolescent girls, the best predictors of obesity in adulthood are suffering from depression, engaging in radical weight control behaviours and having obese parents, researchers have found.
Surprisingly, the usual suspects — lack of exercise, high-fat food consumption and binge eating — did not strongly predict adult obesity, according to a study in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
The researchers, from the University of Texas and the Oregon Research Institute, followed 496 teenage girls for five years, recording their weights and body mass indexes yearly.
The girls responded to questionnaires and were interviewed about their habits.
They were also asked whether they considered their parents obese. Those who engaged in what the researchers called compensatory behaviour — that is, vomiting and laxative abuse — were the most likely to become obese during the period of the study.
Those with obese parents were also inclined to excessive weight gain. Eating a high-fat diet was the weakest predictor of obesity. Eric Stice, the lead author, warns that the study depends on self-reports, which are not always reliable, and that its results should not lead anyone to conclude that avoiding exercise or eating a high-fat diet is harmless.
The New York Times
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