Abstract
Problematic eating behaviors and obesity are frequent problems encountered during adolescence that may potentially result in psychological, social and physical consequences that may interfere with adolescent development and well-being. The present study evaluates the relationship between satisfaction with food-related life and satisfaction with family life, and their relationship with life satisfaction in male and female adolescents. We explored the relationships between both subscales of the Revised Restraint Scale (RRS), Diet Concern (DC) and Weight Fluctuation (WF) and adolescent life satisfaction as well as satisfaction with food-related life and family life. We also explored the moderating role of socioeconomic status (SES). A questionnaire was applied to a non-probabilistic sample of 470 adolescents (mean age 13.2 years, 52.3% female) in Chile, including the RRS, Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), Satisfaction with Food-related Life (SWL-Food) scale and Satisfaction with Family Life (SWL-Family) scale. Using structural equation modeling, we found that adolescent life satisfaction was related to satisfaction with family life and food-related life in both genders. In male adolescents, a negative relationship was identified between WF and food-related life satisfaction. In contrast, a negative relationship was identified in female adolescents between DC and food-related life satisfaction. DC and WF were not directly related to life satisfaction or to satisfaction with family life in either gender. SES was found to moderate the relationship between food-related life satisfaction and life satisfaction and the relationship between WF and food-related life satisfaction in female adolescents. These findings suggest that reducing DC in female adolescents and reducing WF in male adolescents and female adolescents from higher SES may improve their food-related life satisfaction.
Highlights
Problematic eating behaviors and obesity are frequently experienced during adolescence (Loth et al, 2014; Walther and Hilbert, 2016) and can often persist into adulthood (Pearson et al, 2017)
Male and female adolescents did not differ in their Diet Concern (DC), Weight Fluctuation (WF) and Restraint Scale (RRS) average scores (p > 0.1)
socioeconomic status (SES) was not found to have a moderating role on these structural model parameters (H11, H12, H13, H14, H16, and H17). This is the first study to assess the joint relationship of the food and family domains with overall life satisfaction in adolescents of both genders
Summary
Problematic eating behaviors (such as overeating and restrained eating) and obesity are frequently experienced during adolescence (Loth et al, 2014; Walther and Hilbert, 2016) and can often persist into adulthood (Pearson et al, 2017). Recent studies have suggested that satisfaction within the food and family domains are positively correlated with overall life satisfaction, both in emerging adults (Schnettler et al, 2017c) and in adolescents (Schnettler et al, 2017b). Based on the bottomup theoretical approach to life satisfaction, which implies that life satisfaction depends on the level of satisfaction a person feels in regard to different life domains (Brief et al, 1993), and the spillover model that proposes that domain satisfactions are positively related (Wu, 2009), the first objective of this study was to assess the joint relationship of the food and family domains with overall life satisfaction in adolescents from both genders. H3: Satisfaction with food-related life is positively related to satisfaction with family life in adolescents
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