Effects of emotional symptoms and life stress on eating behaviors among adolescents

•It is the first time to investigate adolescent eating behaviors in China.•Unhealthy eating behavior can differ by age, gender, BMI and socio-economic status.•Emotional symptoms and life stress increase the risk of restrained, emotional, external eating. The aim of this study was to explore possible effects of emotional symptoms (depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms) and life stress on eating behaviors (restrained, emotional and external eating behaviors) among junior and high school students in China. A total of 5473 students in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province were sampled to participate in this survey based on a clustering sampling approach. The survey collected sociodemographic data, emotional symptoms, life stress and eating behaviors of adolescents. Spearman correlation coefficients were measured and tested to examine the relationship between eating behaviors and emotional symptoms as well as life stress. In addition, we analyzed the data using Chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression models. The results showed positive correlation between emotional symptoms, life stress, and eating behaviors. Furthermore, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms and life stress were significantly associated with unhealthy eating behaviors, after adjusting for gender, age, BMI, parental education level and self-assessed family economic status. This study suggests that a comprehensive intervention focusing on emotion and stress management would be helpful for the prevention of unhealthy eating behaviors among Chinese adolescents.