Eating behaviour and its association with social living conditions and weight status among adolescent girls: results of the cross-sectional Berlin School Children's Cohort study

Objective: To capture a more holistic picture of eating behaviour by investigating the impact of the social living conditions and weight status of parents and daughters on food consumption frequency, the context of meals and daily portion sizes. Design: Cross-sectional Berlin School Children's Cohort study. Setting: A total of sixty-nine schools in Berlin (3 400 000 inhabitants, eastern Germany) participated in the present study. Subjects: A total of 1519 girls aged 11-14 years were selected. Bi- and multivariate analyses were performed to examine the impact of age, migration background, socio-economic status (SES), parental education, family situation and the weight status of parents and daughters on three different eating behaviour scores according to nutritional recommendations. Results: For the three dependent eating behaviour variables, different patterns of influencing factors emerged. Multivariate regression (model 1) revealed that low and middle SES, two-parent migration background and older age were significant risk factors. Meal context was also significantly influenced by living with a single parent. Similar results were obtained for the daily portion size scores and maternal overweight status was the most influential. Model 2 succeeded in showing that, within the composite variable of family SES, mothers' level of education was the dominant component. Conclusions: SES as a whole, and especially the component of mothers' level of education and two-parent migration background, was the strongest risk factor for an unfavourable eating pattern among adolescent girls. The results clearly indicated preventive potential. Using three different measures of eating behaviour simultaneously provided an in-depth understanding of general patterns and potential risk factors.