Emotional hunger and its relation to being overweight and obese

Abstract

Overweight and obesity are diseases that have recently gained relevance as a result of their global prevalence. Mexico, in particular, stands amongst the countries with the most obese and overweighted populations in both adults and children. Emotional hunger might be one of the psychological factors predictive of this ailment, which is why this research was carried out with the aim of knowing the correlation between overweight, obesity and emotional hunger. A cross-sectional, non-experimental, cross-correlational design study was conducted on 110 people from FES Zaragoza and Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, who were surveyed using two different instruments, one being the Behavior and Emotions Questionnaire and the other being about Emotional Hunger, which was also accompanied by an informed consent form and a sociodemographic questionnaire. The answers from the first questionnaire were categorized and the percentages of the sociodemographic data from the Emotional Hunger instrument were calculated; in addition, a Spearman correlation test was performed to determine the presence or absence of correlations between the aforementioned variables. The results indicate the absence of a statistically significant correlation between overweight, obesity and emotional hunger. The greatest contribution derivative from this research is an approach to the construct of emotional hunger and the setting of opportunities for future research.