Session: Adolescents and Eating Behavior: Results From the Orbit Study (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

The objective of this poster symposium is to present results from a project designed to understand the etiology of habitual dietary behavior among adolescents and to use this understanding to create a novel family-based obesity prevention intervention that targets modification of habitual dietary behavior. The research was funded as part of the ORBIT (Obesity Related Behavioral Intervention Trials) initiative funded by NHLBI. In general, the project draws on theory in habit formation and impulsivity to understand eating behavior among adolescents and uses this information to develop a novel family-based obesity prevention intervention. The abstracts in this symposium focus on several areas of adolescent eating behavior using data from two studies. The first study used ecological momentary assessment methods to identify cues to habitual dietary consumption among 158 adolescents over approximately 7 days. In the second study, 201  adolescents reported eating behavior and a variety of psychological and personality measures including measures of impulsivity and affective decision making.The first abstract (Susan Ames et al.) will describe models for eating behavior as a function of impulsivity and affective decision making. There is evidence that impulsivity measures are related to consumption of sweetened drinks.  Matthew Cox et al., present research on the relations among impulsivity measures, including methods to improve measurement by constructing item parcels to more accurately model impulsivity. Ingrid Wurpts et al. describe methods to cluster adolescent eating patterns using a latent profile analysis of diet in two data sets of adolescent eating behavior. Jerry Grenard et al. explore the interpersonal and external cues related to habitual eating behavior.  Bayley Smith et al. provide an overview of how impulsivity is related to sweetened drinks and snacks. Overall the results provide information on habitual dietary consumption among adolescents and insight into how impulsivity is related to eating. These results will be used to inform program design in later studies.