ongoing, long-term, prospective cohort study involving children born in 1989 within 87 communities of Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. In 1992, we distributed a health questionnaire to parents who attended community-based health checkups for 3-year-old children. From a total of 10,526 children who had the checkups, questionnaires for 4,592 were returned by mail. We subsequently carried out followup surveys when they were 6 years old (2,141 subjects; follow-up rate, 46.6%) and 12 years old (2,375 subjects; follow-up rate, 51.7%) based on postal surveys sent to their parents. We included 822 boys and 668 girls who had completed 6-and 12-year-old questionnaires and provided valid information on eating habits, height and weight. Independently, some junior high schools carried out health checkups for 12 year olds; 25 municipal education boards permitted usage of the health checkup data for the present study (number of participants, 615). Additionally, in the survey at age 12, we asked parents for permission to obtain S peed eating is considered as a risk factor for the development of obesity, 1 but there is limited evidence in the literature with regards to children. 2 Furthermore, an associative link between habitual speed eating and subsequent effect on blood pressure (BP) is also scarce. In order to gain a greater understanding of this association in children, we conducted a long-term cohort study to examine the association between habitual speed eating at 6 years old and follow-up body mass index (BMI) as well as BP at 12 years old among Japanese children. Our hypothesis was that children who continued speed eating from 6 to 12 years old would have higher BMI and BP levels at 12 years old compared with slower eaters at either age.
Methods
Study SubjectsThe Ibaraki Children's Cohort (IBACHIL) Study is an Background: Habitual speed eating is a risk factor of obesity but evidence of this in children is limited. We examined the association between speed-eating habit and subsequent body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure (BP) among Japanese children.
Methods and Results:The community-based study comprised 1,490 Japanese boys and girls who were born in 1989, involved in the Ibaraki Children's Cohort Study at age 3 years, and had returned questionnaires at both ages 6 and 12 years. In a subsample, we measured BP (n=263). Speed-eating habit was categorized into 4 groups: Never, Quit, Newly, and Continuous. Sex-specific mean values of questionnaire-based BMI and measured BPs at age 12 were examined according to speed-eating habit. Children with continuous speed eating had a higher BMI at age 12 than those who had never had a speed-eating habit (20.0 vs. 17.9 kg/m 2 for boys (P<0.001); 20.0 vs. 18.4 kg/m 2 (P<0.001) for girls). Systolic BP at age 12 was higher in boys with continuous speed eating than in those without (117 vs. 110 mmHg, P=0.01), but such a difference was not observed in girls (112 vs. 111 mmHg, P=0.95).
Conclusions:Habitual speed eating was positively associated with subsequent BMI among boys and girls as well ...
