ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutritional Epidemiology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1588447
Use of Caffeine in 19,660 Randomly Selected U.S. Adults: The Role of Overweight and Obesity
Provisionally accepted
Larry A. Tucker*
Frank Beltran- Brigham Young University, Provo, United States
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Background: Caffeine is a stimulant. It is one of the most consumed drugs in the United States. The present investigation was conducted to determine the relationships between BMI and waist circumference, and caffeine intake. The specific objective was to determine whether adults with higher BMIs or larger waist circumferences consume more or less caffeine than their counterparts.Methods: A sample of 19,960 randomly selected women and men, 20-75 years old, representing the U.S. adult population, was studied using a cross-sectional design. Data was collected as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2009 through 2018. A number of covariates were controlled statistically to minimize their influence on the results: age, gender, race, year of assessment, alcohol use, smoking, time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity, total energy intake (kcal), and consumption (g per 1000 kcal) of dietary fiber, carbohydrate, protein, fat, sugar, and saturated fat.After adjusting for all the covariates, results showed that in U.S. men, there was a doseresponse relationship between higher BMI categories and higher caffeine consumption (F=4.1, p=0.0092). After adjusting for all the covariates, the relationship between waist circumference and caffeine intake in men was linear (F=8.0, p=0.0060). In U.S. women, after adjusting for all the covariates, there was a weaker but significant relationship between the BMI categories and caffeine intake (F=3.4, p=0.0232). In women, the association between waist circumference and caffeine intake was not linear (F=0.0, p=0.8490), but was quadratic (F=18.9, p<0.0001) with all the covariates controlled.Conclusions: Overall, this study found that U.S. men with larger body mass and waist levels consumed higher amounts of caffeine than their counterparts. U.S. women did also, but the relationships were quadratic, not linear like the men's. It appears that the drug, caffeine, has multiple properties that appeal to adults with higher BMI and waist circumference levels. Additional research is needed to better understand why adults with larger body mass and waist sizes consume significantly more caffeine than their counterparts.
Keywords: Appetite suppressant, stimulant, NHANES, BMI, waist, Abdominal Fat
Received: 05 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tucker and Beltran. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Larry A. Tucker, Brigham Young University, Provo, United States
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