[Food craving symptoms in older school age children and its relation to body-mass index]

Recent findings show that food craving represents an important co-factor in overweight and obesity etiology and its severity represents a good predictor of relapse during active weight control. Child overweight and obesity also represents significant predictive factor of adulthood obesity and evidence about its incidence in children is therefore important. In order to achieve this evidence the indices of food craving has measured in 150 older school age children (54 boys and 96 girls; mean age 13.6 ± 1.2). The food craving symptoms were measured by validated Czech translation of the General Food-Craving Questionnaire-Trait (G-FCQ-T). Body proportions of children were indexed by body-mass index (BMI). BMI were assessed according to cut-off points BMI references from the Czech Republic. Results have shown that older school children have experience with food craving symptoms, and that intensity of these symptoms is significantly associated with BMI value (r = 0.55; p < 0.0001). Statistical analysis also revealed higher incidence of food craving symptoms intensity in girls. These findings provide basic normative data about food craving symptoms occurrence and intensity in older school age children group. Presented results also indirectly support the hypothesis that food craving could represent important co-factor in childhood obesity etiology. The consequences for obesity psychotherapy will be discussed.