Influence of Gender on the Relationship Between Eating Behaviors, Age and BMI in People in Benghazi, Benghazi, Libya

Obesity is recognized as one of the major nutrition related disorders around the world. Eating behaviours affect caloric intake and are implicated in the development of obesity. Three types of eating behaviours (cognitive restraint (CR), emotional eating (EE) and uncontrolled eating (UE)) have been studied for associations with obesity in various populations. The aim of the present work was to investigate the interactions between eating behavior and age and to determine the influence of gender on this relationship. This study was conducted on 351 volunteers from Benghazi University students and staff, eating behaviours were measured using the revised three-factor eating questionnaire (TFEQ-R18). Anthropometric measurements for all participants included in this study were measured and BMI was calculated. The finding of this study showed that the age was (26.12 ± 7.749), BMI (23.99 ± 5.003), Cognitive Restraint (15.83 ± 3.662), Emotional Eating (6.74 ± 2.028), and Uncontrolled Eating (20.83 ± 4.338). The study found positive relationship between age and cognitive restraint (r = 0.110*, p = 0.039) and between age and emotional eating (r = 0.123*, p = 0.021). However, relationships were stronger only in women, the study also found a positive relationship between BMI and cognitive restraint (r = 0.184**, p < .01), emotional eating (r = 0.217**, p < .01) and uncontrolled eating (r = 0.260**, p < .01) for the whole sample. But when we split the population by sex the relationships were significant only in women. The results of this study show age was associated with cognitive restraint and emotional eating only in female. BMI was positively correlated with three factor eating score, when the sample divided by sex, the association were significant only in women.