Managing diabetes means thinking about food at almost every meal. Researchers in Türkiye asked whether teens' attitudes towards eating were linked to how well their blood sugar was controlled. Doctors call this "glycaemic control".
The study included 143 adolescents with diabetes, aged 10 to 19 (average age 14). They attended a research hospital between February and April 2024. About half (49.7%) had lived with diabetes for 1 to 5 years. The authors' conclusions refer to Type 1 diabetes.
Average eating-attitude scores sat below the warning cutoff
Teens completed the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), a questionnaire about how they think and feel about food and dieting. Higher scores suggest more worrying attitudes. The average total score was 16.62, which the authors report as below the commonly used cutoff score.
The questionnaire also has sub-scores. The "Dieting" average was 10.39. "Bulimia food preoccupation", which covers constant thoughts about food, averaged 2.33. "Oral control", which covers self-control around eating, averaged 3.79. These are averages across the group, so they do not show how any one teen was doing.
No link to HbA1c, but other differences appeared
HbA1c is a blood test that reflects average blood sugar over recent months, and it is the study's measure of glycaemic control. The researchers found no significant association between EAT-26 scores and HbA1c. In this group, teens with more worrying eating attitudes did not have measurably different blood sugar control from the others.
Eating-attitude scores did differ by some characteristics, including body mass index (BMI, a weight-for-height measure), treatment modality (the type of diabetes treatment a teen uses) and treatment adherence (how closely a teen follows the treatment plan). The summary does not say in which direction these differences ran, so we cannot say which teens scored higher or lower.
What this snapshot cannot tell us
- It is a cross-sectional study, meaning it looked at teens once. It cannot show that anything caused anything else, or how attitudes change over time.
- Teens answered questions about themselves, so the scores reflect self-reported attitudes.
- It involved one hospital in Türkiye. It did not include Singapore teens, so we cannot say the results apply here.
Blood-sugar numbers and food worries are separate questions
The authors conclude that eating-related assessment belongs within the overall care of teens with Type 1 diabetes. Two steps follow from the findings:
- Ask your teen's diabetes team whether eating-related questions can be part of routine visits, as the authors recommend for overall care.
- Do not assume a good HbA1c means your teen feels fine about food. The study found no link between the two.