Obesity commonly emerges by adolescence and is associated with serious health consequences. Emotional eating (consuming calories, fats, and sugars in response to negative affect) may promote obesity; however, evidence is mixed as to whether negative affect increases obesogenic eating. Early-life adversity may shape malleable neurobiological systems that govern inhibitory control, physiological regulation, coping strategies, and eating behavior, contributing to greater obesogenic eating in response to negative affect. Therefore, this study tested whether childhood adversity moderates the association between negative affect and food consumption in a diverse sample of female adolescents. After completing a childhood adversity assessment, 157 female adolescents (13-17 years; 28.7% African American, 39.5% Hispanic/Latina, 31.8% Non-Hispanic White) rated their negative affect in response to a standard social stress paradigm before consuming a buffet lunch, which was evaluated for calories, added sugars, and solid fats consumed. Results did not support that negative affect exerted a main effect on eating behavior. However, negative affect and childhood adversity interacted to predict calories and solid fats consumed, such that negative affect was associated with more obesogenic eating for those with high adversity exposure but not for those with low adversity exposure. Adversity and affect did not interact to predict added sugars consumed. Findings support that eating patterns in response to negative affect may differ by childhood adversity history. Reducing children's adversity exposure and bolstering emotion regulation techniques for adolescents who have been exposed to adversity may provide pathways to protect health and well-being by reducing maladaptive eating patterns.

Parents have multifaceted identities, across dimensions like race/ethnicity, gender, and class, which shape their experience of discrimination. However, little is known about how distress from such multidimensional discrimination influences parenting behavior and parent-adolescent relationships. We tested associations between mothers' multidimensional discrimination distress and parental control (overcontrol and conditional regard) and daughters' attachment, among 82 African American (AA), Hispanic/Latina (HL), and non-Hispanic White (NHW) mother-adolescent daughter dyads in the United States. Additionally, we examined whether these associations vary by race/ethnicity. Mothers reported their distress due to multidimensional discrimination and adolescents reported mothers' overcontrol, mothers' conditional regard, and adolescents' attachment to mothers. Across racial/ethnic groups, more multidimensional discrimination distress was associated with more maternal overcontrol. Additionally, racial/ethnic groups differed in associations between discrimination, maternal conditional regard, and adolescent attachment, such that AA mothers were buffered from the deleterious effects of discrimination on conditional regard and adolescent attachment. HL mothers were buffered from effects on adolescent attachment and conditional regard for anger expression, but not fear expression. Findings suggest that stigmatized racial/ethnic groups may rely on adaptive cultural practices to parent effectively in the face of multidimensional discrimination distress, but these resources may not be available to NHW mothers.

Objective

Racial/ethnic disparities in obesity may be due, in part, to minority groups consuming more energy-rich diets in response to greater stress exposure. The present study systematically reviewed the literature describing the effects of stress on food consumption among various racial/ethnic groups in the US.

Methods

PubMed and PsycINFO databases were searched for studies reporting associations between stress and food consumption by different racial/ethnic groups, conducted between January 1, 1999 to November 25, 2019. The search included terms related to food consumption, stress, and race/ethnicity. After screening 3660 records, 30 studies were included for review.

Results

The selected studies assessed diverse stressors and eating constructs; African-American and Hispanic/Latinx were the most commonly studied minority groups. Studies generally supported that diverse forms of stress exposure are associated with reduced healthy eating patterns and increased obesogenic eating patterns across racial/ethnic groups. However, studies that directly compared stress-eating associations among multiple racial/ethnic groups showed mixed results.

Conclusion

Members of diverse racial/ethnic groups are susceptible to stress-induced unhealthy eating patterns, though evidence is insufficient to conclude whether the degree of susceptibility differs among groups. Additional studies utilizing observational measures of food intake and culturally sensitive measures of stress are needed to identify the most influential stressors on dietary behaviors, to assess whether some stressors are more salient for given racial/ethnic groups, and to examine the extent to which stress-induced eating contributes to racial/ethnic disparities in obesity and obesity-related diseases.

This study examined parental depression and parental reflective functioning (PRF) as predictors of parental proficiency in relational savoring (RS), the association between RS proficiency and a marker of children's physiological self-regulation, respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), during a stressor, and indirect effects of parental depression and PRF on children's RSA via parents' RS. At Time 1 (T1), parents of 8- to 12-year-old children (N = 139) reported on their depressive symptoms and completed a parenting interview, coded for PRF. After 1.5 years (Time 2; T2), parents savored a positive relational memory that involved their children, which was coded for savoring proficiency. Children's RSA was measured during a stressful task (a series of impossible puzzles). Depressive symptoms (inversely) and PRF (positively) were associated with RS proficiency. Higher parental RS proficiency was associated with children's higher mean levels of RSA during the stressor. Indirect effects models supported that T2 RS proficiency mediated the negative association between parental T1 depressive symptoms and children's T2 RSA, and between T1 PRF and children's T2 RSA. We discuss these findings in terms of implications for parents' emotion regulation, children's emotion regulation, children's mental health, and intervention.

Background

African-American (AA) and Hispanic/Latina (HL) females have higher obesity prevalence than do non-Hispanic Whites (NHW); this may be due to AA and HL consuming more energy-dense foods in response to stressors.

Objectives

This study examined racial/ethnic differences in dietary intake under controlled conditions (relaxation and stress) in a diverse sample of adolescent females.

Methods

Participants included 120 adolescent females (30% AA, 37% HL and 33% NHW) who participated in a laboratory food intake study. Using a randomized cross-over design, ad libitum food consumption was measured following control/relaxation and social-evaluative stress conditions. Food intake was indexed as consumed calories, added sugars and solid fats.

Results

The effect of laboratory conditions on food intake varied by race/ethnicity, such that AA consumed more energy following relaxation than following stress. For NHW and HL, food intake did not differ between conditions.

Conclusions

To the best of our knowledge, these findings are the first to directly observe racial/ethnic differences in food intake in response to acute stress, which may contribute to obesity-related health disparities.

COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the Latinx community, leading to heightened economic instability and increased mortality/morbidity. Frontline community health workers (promotoras) have played an integral role in serving low-income Latinx immigrant communities, disseminating health information to this vulnerable community while also facing heightened risks to their own health and wellbeing. This study explores the impact of the pandemic on Latinx communities and the promotoras that serve them, examining how the stresses and inequities the pandemic wrought might be mitigated. Promotoras (N = 15, all female) were recruited from a local health agency in Santa Ana, CA and completed a semi-structured interview about their experiences during COVID-19. Qualitative analyses demonstrated that the pandemic substantially affected the daily lives both of community members, via economic challenges, limited access to reliable pandemic-related information, and psychological and social stress, and of promotoras, via changes to the nature of their work and psychological and social stress. Promotoras perceived that these harms might be mitigated by providing for economic and material needs in the community, and that promotoras can be fortified to continue serving the community through self-care and psychosocial healing practices. According to promotoras, the Latinx community needs economic and material resources to overcome COVID-19 related stressors. Additionally, promotoras may benefit from programming to preserve mental and physical health in the wake of new stressors. Lending greater support to promotoras within the agencies in which they are nested may enable them to be more successful in fulfilling their mission and sustaining their own health.