Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Patients with type 2 diabetes face daily challenges in making dietary choices that are influenced by eating behaviors. Recognition of eating behaviors and associated demographic profiles could aid in individualizing dietary plans and direct nutrition programs in forming cost-effective measures.

Objective: The goal of this study is to identify differences in eating behaviors across demographic profiles of Filipinos with type 2 diabetes.

Methods: Demographic data and answers of 197 Filipinos with type 2 diabetes to the Filipino eating behavior questionnaire were obtained and tallied. Paired t-test and one-way ANOVA were used to compare eating behavior scores across categories of the demographic data.

Results: Patients with type 2 diabetes who scored higher in uncontrolled eating tend to have a higher level of education, positive family history of diabetes, and ate two meals with no snacks per day. Those who were considered restrained eaters were previous smokers, on insulin and oral hypoglycemic agents, and ate three meals and a snack. Emotional eaters were observed to eat two meals with no snacks per day while social eaters tend to be younger, employed, have higher level of education, and family history of diabetes. High scorers in proactive eating have a longer duration of diabetes and ate no snacks. Uncontrolled, emotional, social, and pro-active eating domains seem to have direct relationships, while restrained eating tends to show an inverse relationship with the other eating behaviors. The estimated prevalence’s were 14, 14, 12, 13, and 11% for uncontrolled, restrained, emotional, social, and pro-active eating, respectively.

Conclusion: Among patients with type 2 diabetes, eating behaviors may vary and depend on their demographic profiles. Eating behaviors related to overeating seem to be directly related to each other and inversely related to restrained eating. Prevalence rate of behaviors related to overeating and restrained eating were both relatively low.