Aulbach Matthias Burkard, Bamberg Christoph, Reichenberger Julia, Arend Ann-Kathrin, Blechert Jens
Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Hellbrunner Str. 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Hellbrunner Str. 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
Appetite. 2025 Mar 1;207:107897. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2025.107897. Epub 2025 Feb 10.
Emotional eating and Stress Eating concepts hold that affective experiences can instill the desire for palatable foods. The empirical evidence for such couplings between affective and appetitive systems, however, is mixed and it remains unclear which one precedes the other or whether interindividual differences in such relationships exist. To study the temporal relations between a range of negative and positive emotions and stress on the one hand and snacking behavior on the other, we analyzed over 40.000 questionnaire entries obtained through ecological momentary assessment from 801 participants across nine different studies. Several trait-level eating style questionnaire scores were modelled as moderators for the emotion/stress - snacking relationships. Results showed that stronger boredom was followed by more snacking. Only irritation showed the pattern of reduction following snacking that would be predicted by emotion regulation accounts of emotional eating. Restrained eaters showed larger increases in boredom after snacking (compared to not snacking) than unrestrained eaters. Eating style questionnaires did not significantly moderate any other emotion - snacking - emotion relationships. Together with other recent findings from this dataset (Aulbach et al., n.d.) the present results suggest that eating style questionnaires capture tendencies to experience food cravings, but not snacking, as the latter might be 'gated' by several internal and external conditions that our EMA data and the trait questionnaire do not capture well. Accordingly, we suggest a novel terminology for affect-eating relationships that increases precision on the temporal (affects before or after eating/craving) and the phenomenological (snacking, craving) level.
情绪化进食和压力性进食的概念认为，情感体验会引发对美味食物的渴望。然而，关于情感系统和食欲系统之间这种关联的实证证据并不一致，目前尚不清楚两者谁先谁后，或者这种关系中是否存在个体差异。为了研究一系列负面和正面情绪以及压力与吃零食行为之间的时间关系，我们分析了来自9项不同研究的801名参与者通过生态瞬时评估获得的40000多份问卷条目。将几个特质水平的饮食风格问卷得分作为情绪/压力与吃零食关系的调节变量进行建模。结果表明，无聊感越强，吃零食的次数就越多。只有愤怒情绪表现出吃零食后减少的模式，这与情绪化进食的情绪调节理论预测相符。与非克制型进食者相比，克制型进食者在吃零食后（与未吃零食相比）无聊感增加得更多。饮食风格问卷并未显著调节任何其他情绪与吃零食之间的关系。结合该数据集的其他近期研究结果（奥尔巴赫等人，未注明日期），目前的研究结果表明，饮食风格问卷捕捉到的是对食物渴望的倾向，而非吃零食的行为，因为后者可能受到一些内部和外部条件的“制约”，而我们的生态瞬时评估数据和特质问卷并未很好地捕捉到这些条件。因此，我们建议采用一种新的术语来描述情感与进食的关系，以提高在时间（情感在进食/渴望之前或之后）和现象学（吃零食、渴望）层面的精确性。
