Exploring a relationship between race-related stress and emotional eating for collegiate Black American women

Abstract

Four out of five Black women in the United States, over the age of 20 years, meet criteria for obesity. A critical determinant of pervasive health disparities, such as obesity, may be the Black woman's sociocultural experience. One part of this experience is the stress that results from daily encounters with microaggressions. Research has been limited on the association of race-related stress with maladaptive health behaviors among Black women and at what age this association is visible. The aim of this exploratory cross-sectional study was to investigate whether perceived race-related stress was associated with an obesity risk behavior, emotional eating. One hundred and forty-nine collegiate Black American women from across the United States completed an anonymous online survey during the summer of 2014. Race-related stress was moderately correlated with emotional eating (r = 0.32, p < 0.001). However, a hierarchical linear regression revealed that the relationship between race-related stress and emotional eating remained significant after controlling for weight range and general perceived stress. Race-related stress contributed an additional 3.9 percent of the explained variance for emotional eating. Interventions for weight loss and management targeting young adult Black women must acknowledge how their perceived racial experience is linked to health behaviors and outcomes.

Prejudice, Discrimination, and Health

“…Perceived racial discrimination has been associated with smoking and alcohol consumption in African Americans ( Borrell et al, 2013 ) and heavy drinking in Latinos/Latinas ( Borrell et al, 2010 ). Race-related stress was also associated with emotional eating in Black women ( Longmire-Avital & McQueen, 2019 ). However, in a longitudinal analysis, racial discrimination did not predict unhealthy eating behaviors over time in a cohort of Black Americans monitored for hypertension and related risk factors ( Forsyth, Schoenthaler, Ogedegbe, & Ravenell, 2014 ).…”

Reviewing Racial Microaggressions Research: Documenting Targets’ Experiences, Harmful Sequelae, and Resistance Strategies

“…Below, we focus on stress and anxiety, depressive symptoms, general psychological distress and well-being, and physiological functioning. Although beyond the scope of the current review, we acknowledge investigations that have linked racial microaggressions to career indecision and self-efficacy (Bonifacio et al, 2018;Gomez et al, 2011), externalizing behaviors (Dickerson et al, 2019;Isom, 2016;Lui, 2020;Pro et al, 2018;Su et al, 2020), and eating concerns (Le et al, 2020;Longmire-Avital & McQueen, 2019).…”

Perceived racial discrimination and eating habits: Systematic review and conceptual models

“…Other eating behavior outcomes, like overeating, restraint, eating, and body concern were assessed less frequently. Emotional eating was measured by validated instruments 4,29,31 , and one non validated emotional eating survey 14 . While some researchers investigated the desire to eat while experiencing specific emotions as a whole, some studies evaluated and sorted particular emotions to understand the motivations to eat.…”

“…Participants' race/ethnicity in the majority of the studies (63%) focused on the Black or African-American population only 4,13,31,32,14,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] . The majority (63%) of the studies included female and male gender 8,13,33,34,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30]32 .…”

“…Of the 19 studies, 8 scored between 30-60% 8,13,14,25,26,29,30,35 ; 8 presented 70-80% 4,28,[32][33][34][36][37][38] and only 3 scored above 85% 24,27,31 (Table 2). The average percentage was 66%.…”