Is comfort food actually comforting for emotional eaters? A (moderated) mediation analysis

doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.112671

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 211, 1 November 2019, 112671

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.112671 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Mediation analyses addressed relations between eating, palatability and mood.
•
In non-obese women, eating tasty snacks improved mood after sadness induction.
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Mood improvement after eating was mediated by eating satisfaction.
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For eating after stress, tastiness mediated comfort only for high emotional eaters.
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This clarifies that eating palatable food is comforting for emotional eaters.

Abstract

An important but unreplicated earlier finding on comfort eating was that the association between food intake and immediate mood improvement appeared to be mediated by the palatability of the food, and that this effect was more pronounced for high than for low emotional eaters [26]. This has not yet been formally tested using mediation and moderated mediation analysis. We conducted these analyses using data from two experiments on non-obese female students (n = 29 and n = 74). Mood and eating satisfaction in Study 1, and mood, tastiness and emotional eating in Study 2 were all self-reported. In Study 1, using a sad mood induction procedure, emotional eaters ate more food, and when mood was assessed immediately after food intake, ‘eating satisfaction’ acted as mediator between food intake and mood improvement (decrease in sadness or increase in happiness). In Study 2, where we measured the difference in actual food intake after a control or a stress task (modified Trier Social Stress Test), and assessed mood during the food intake after stress, we found significant moderated mediation. As expected, there was a significant positive mediation effect of tastiness between food intake and mood improvement in the high emotional eaters, but also a significant negative mediation effect of tastiness between food intake and mood improvement in the low emotional eaters. This suggests that tastiness promotes ‘comfort’ from food in female emotional eaters, but conflicts in non-emotional eaters with a tendency to eat less when stressed. In conclusion, palatable food may indeed provide comfort specifically for high emotional eaters during eating.

Section snippets

Background

The typical adaptive response to negative mood or distress is loss of appetite [14], because distress is normally associated with physiological responses that mimic physiological correlates of satiety, e.g. inhibition of gastric motility and release of glucose into the bloodstream. However, so called emotional eaters show the atypical response to distress of eating energy-dense food, and thus additional calories [31,44,46,52], which may result in weight gain and, ultimately, obesity [12,23].

Overview of study 1

In this study we wanted to determine whether experienced pleasantness acts as a mediator between food intake and mood improvement. The pleasantness of the food intake was assessed with a concept that covers the hedonic experience of eating, namely ‘eating satisfaction’ [2], i.e. more precisely representing the pleasantness of the overall intake experience rather than a more general palatability of the food. Because the study used a between-subject design, with half of the participants receiving

Overview of study 2

For Study 2, we used data from an ongoing so called ‘health and physiology’ investigation [45,46,48]. The data for the additional participants in the present study had been collected between October 2012 and May 2013. Using a within-subject design in females varying in emotional eating, we measured the difference in food intake following a laboratory control task or a stress task, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; [22]). We further assessed negative affect during various time points, most

General discussion

In two studies, we assessed the possible mediating effect of eating satisfaction or ‘lekker’ (tastiness) between food intake and mood improvement respectively after or during the food intake. In one study (Study 2) we additionally assessed whether the mediation effect of ‘lekker’ is contingent on emotional eating, with expected stronger mediation effects in high than in intermediate or low emotional eaters. In Study 1, where mood was assessed after the food intake, we found, as expected,

General conclusion

In non-obese young women, food experienced as highly palatable and satisfying may provide comfort, i.e. reduce negative affect, specifically for high emotional eaters, at least during eating.

Role of funding source

Study 1 was funded in part by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica 2008–2011) in the Project (PSI2008-04392/PSIC). Funding of L.H.H. Winkens was provided by the European Union FP7 MoodFood Project ‘Multi-country collaborative project on the role of Diet, Food-related behaviour, and Obesity in the prevention of Depression’ (grant agreement no. 613598).

Contributors

RB and AC oversaw the data collection of Study 1. TvS oversaw the data collection of Study 2, conducted all analyses and prepared the first draft of the manuscript. LG was responsible for the second and final drafts of the manuscript. LW prepared the manuscript for submission.

All authors commented and contributed on drafts of the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.

Declaration of Competing Interest

Tatjana van Strien has a copyright and royalty interest in the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) and manual.

Acknowledgement

CIBERObn is an initiate of the ISCIII.

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Low-income Black and Latinx individuals are disproportionately vulnerable to chronic stress and metabolic disease. Evidence suggests that these populations engage in elevated levels of comfort eating (i.e., eating comforting food to alleviate stress), which can harm diet quality. For this reason, many interventions discourage comfort eating. However, if comfort eating does indeed buffer stress, it may be a protective health behavior, particularly if healthy foods (e.g., strawberries) buffer stress as effectively as traditional unhealthy comfort foods (e.g., brownies). By choosing healthy foods, people may be able to simultaneously improve their nutrition and reduce their stress levels, both of which have the potential to reduce health disparities among chronically stressed populations. The present study tested the efficacy of healthy and unhealthy comfort eating for improving psychophysiological stress recovery. A sample of low-income Black and Latinx individuals (N = 129) were randomly assigned to consume a healthy food (e.g., grapes), unhealthy comfort food (e.g., chips), or no food after exposure to a laboratory stressor. Throughout, we measured participants' psychophysiological stress responses, including self-reported stress, rumination, autonomic nervous system activation (i.e., electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate variability (HRV)) and neuroendocrine responses (i.e., salivary cortisol). We compared participants' stress recovery trajectories by condition and found no significant group differences (p = 0.12 for self-reported stress; p = 0.92 for EDA; p = 0.22 for HRV, p = 1.00 for cortisol). Participants in all conditions showed decreases in self-reported stress and in cortisol post-stressor (ps < 0.01), but rates of decline did not differ by condition (i.e., healthy or unhealthy comfort food, brief no-food waiting period). Although null, these results are important because they challenge the widely-held assumption that comfort foods help people decrease stress.
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View full text

Is comfort food actually comforting for emotional eaters? A (moderated) mediation analysis

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Background

Overview of study 1

Overview of study 2

General discussion

General conclusion

Role of funding source

Contributors

Declaration of Competing Interest

Acknowledgement

The effects of caloric deprivation and negative affect on binge eating in obese binge-eating disordered women

Behav. Ther.

Consumers’ views on determinants to food satisfaction. A qualitative approach

Appetite

Internal structure and measurement invariance of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) in a (nearly) representative Dutch Community Sample

Eur. Eat. Disord. Rev.

Negative affect prior to and flowing overeating-only, loss of control eating only, and binge eating episodes in obese adults

Int. J. Eat. Disord.

Negative affect and binge eating: reconciling differences between two analytic approaches in ecological assessment research

Int. J. Eat. Disord.

Female emotional eaters show abnormalities in consummatory and anticipatory food reward: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Int. J. Eat. Disord.

How not to think about immediate dietary and postingestional influences on appetites and satieties

Appetite

Eating Disorders

Validation of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) in a sample of Spanish women

Appetite

Beoordeling Nederlandse Vragenlijst voor Eetgedrag, NVE [Review Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire, DEBQ]

An evaluation of affect and binge eating

Behav. Modif.

The psychobiology of comfort eating: implications for pharmacological interventions

Behav. Pharmacol.

Organization of the stress system and its dysregulation in melancholic and atypical depression: high vs low CRH/NE states

Mol. Psychiatry

Momentary affect surrounding loss of control and overeating in obese adults with and without binge eating disorder

Obesity

Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis, a Regression-Based Approach

An index and test of linear moderated mediation

Multivar. Behav. Res.

Revisiting the affect regulation model of binge eating: a meta-analysis of studies using ecological momentary assessment

Psychol. Bull.

Do emotional eating urges regulate affect? Concurrent and prospective associations and implications for risk models of binge eating

Int. J. Eat. Disord.

Potential benefits of satiety to the consumer: scientific considerations

Nutr. Res. Rev.

Maintenance of binge eating through negative mood: a naturalistic comparison of binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa

Int. J. Eat. Disord.

The Trier social stress test –a tool for investigating psychosocial stress responses in a laboratory setting

Neuropsychobiology

Emotional eating rather than lifestyle behavior drives weight gain in a prospective study in 1562 employees

J. Occup. Environ. Med.

Mood modulation by food - an exploration of affect and cravings in chocolate addicts

Br. J. Clin. Psychol.

Emotions and eating in everyday life

Appetite

Immediate effects of chocolate on experimentally induced mood states

Appetite

Interactive effects of emotional and restrained eating in responses to chocolate and affect

J. Nerv. Ment. Dis.

Emotions in overweight and normal-weight women immediately after eating foods differing in energy

Physiol. Behav.

Statistical difficulties of detecting interactions and moderator effects

Psychol. Bull.