Teenage girls who take to dieting more likely to start smoking

17 September, 2007

Teenage girls on a diet are twice as likely to start smoking as their non-dieting peers, a new study from the University of Florida, the United States, shows.

Researchers analyzed the dieting and smoking habits of 7,795 teens and found that dieting did not have the same effect on boys, who were, in addition, less likely than girls to diet.

The findings appear in the recent issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.

Mildred Maldonado-Molina, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of epidemiology and health policy research at the University of Florida, noted, “Dieting was a significant predictor of initiation of regular smoking among females. We were expecting that this relationship was going to be stronger among females. That has been well-documented, especially because nicotine can suppress your appetite.”

The teens chosen for the study were in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades when surveyed for the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, completed in 1994 and 1995.

The researchers included the answers of adolescents who said they were trying to lose weight, and divided the group into four units – non-dieters, new dieters, former dieters, and consistent dieters (those who said they were dieting both times they were surveyed). They excluded teens who were already smokers and those who admitted to taking diet pills, vomiting, and using other unhealthy weight-loss tactics.

That group (of teens who were beginning to diet) was the one the researchers were most interested in, seeing how the start of one behavior related to initiation of smoking, according to Maldonado-Molina.

Researchers also noted that girls who consistently dieted were more likely to smoke.

“In boys,” Mildred Maldonado-Molina added, “we found something we don’t understand yet. We found that those who were inactive dieters, those who first started dieting and then stopped were more likely to engage in smoking behaviors.”

The good news is that the percentage of American teens smoking has dropped since the survey was conducted. In 1995, about 35% of high school students smoked regularly, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At present, about 23% of high school students and 8% of middle school students in the US reportedly smoke. The percentage of girls who smoke is slightly higher in both age groups, according to a report prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2006 on tobacco use among youth.