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Introduction: Introduction: in the student population, the transition from the school system to the university system often involves a normative life crisis; one of the central challenges of this stage is the shift from an external normative system in permanent operation to individual self-regulation of behavior. One of the areas most affected by this change are self-care habits, including the changes associated with the eating behavior of students, which tend to have a greater impact on accelerated body weight gain, especially during the first years. Objective: to characterize the presence of eating styles-restrictive eating, emotional eating, and external eating-in a sample of Chilean university population. Methods: this was an exploratory, descriptive, cross-sectional study. The sample consisted of 1230 university students (59.1 % women, 41.9 % men) with a mean age of 21 years (SD ± 3.32). The version adapted to the Chilean population of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire was applied. Results: the average scores of the total population for restrictive eating, emotional eating, and external eating were 2.56, 2.48, and 3.13, respectively. Gender differences were observed for all three styles. Discussion: External eating appears as the dominant intake style. This is key to understand the factors affecting the eating behavior of Chilean university students, and then develop effective interventions to consolidate eating habits appropriate for adult life.

Introduction: Background: the study of body dissatisfaction has been focused on their perceptual and cognitive-behavioral components, being the affective component the least analyzed, both in Spain and Chile. Until now, it has been observed more presence of body dissatisfaction in overweight women. This fact has been related with the thinness beauty ideal established by society. Objective: to compare the different components of body dissatisfaction (perceptual, cognitive-behavioral and affective) in adults in a community sample of both sexes of Spain and Chile. Method: the sample consisted of 390 participants and has been divided in two samples by country (n = 179 Chileans; n = 211 Spanish). At the same time, these groups were divided in two groups by body mass index (BMI) and also by sex. The different components of body dissatisfaction were evaluated using specific questionnaires for each of them. Results and conclusion: both in Spain and in Chile, people with overweight show more dissatisfaction in the perceptual and affective areas, especially women. However, cognitive-behavioral component is the only one where differences between countries were found, showing overweight Spanish women more dissatisfaction. These results verify a higher presence of body dissatisfaction in women with overweight (t = 4.14, p < 0.001, d = 0.72, IC = 0.22-1.12), related to the greater pressure on appearance in the female population.

Aims: this research aimed to characterize the daily eating behavior in a sample of Chilean adults according to their Body Mass Index (BMI) and gender and to analyze the possible links between these variables and abnormal eating behaviors., Methods: 657 participants (437 women and 220 men, age range 18-64 years) were evaluated with a battery of self-administered questionnaires. Mean BMI was 25.50 kg/m2 (women 24.96 kg/m2, men 26.58 kg/m2), being significantly higher the mean of BMI in the men group, being the BMI mean of the total sample and that of the male group in the overweight range., Results: participants with overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2), in contrast with normal-weight group, tended to do more frequently the following behaviors: skip meals, follow a diet, eat less homemade food, eat faster and in greater quantities, in addition to do a greater number of abnormal eating behaviors of various kinds and to rate significantly higher in clinical scales that evaluated eating restraint and overeating. Men showed significantly more eating behaviors linked with overeating, and women performed more behaviors related with eating restraint and emotional eating., Discussion: the results suggest that, besides "what" people eat, "how" people eat, in terms of specific behaviors, may contribute to the rapid increase of overweight in Chilean population., (Copyright AULA MEDICA EDICIONES 2014. Published by AULA MEDICA. All rights reserved.)