Emotions and eating - week/lecture 9 Flashcards
3 models/theories for emotional eating
○ Negative emotions (comfort eating)
§ Mood enhancing properties of food (CHO/fatty foods)
○ Escape (from self-awareness) theory
§ Attempt to escape/shift attention from source of anxiety that causes negative self awareness (Heatherton and Baumeister, 1991) e.g. binge eaters
○ 5-way model of links between emotions and eating (Macht, 2008)
5 way model of emotion and eating characteristics
- Integrative and comprehensive model
- Individual characteristics and emotion
- 5 ways emotions impact eating behaviour
- Macht 2008
5 way model of emotion and eating 5 components
- Effect on food choice
- Suppression of food intake
- Undermine cognitive control
- Eating can be a mechanism for regulating emotions
- Emotion-congruent modulation
conclusions from 5 way model of emotions and eating
So:
- Relationships are complex
- Negative and extreme emotions appear to have most comprehensive impact on food selection and eating behaviour
Food important mechanism by which we seek to modulate emotional experiences
stress
- Aversive state where wellbeing is in jeopardy and perceived demands of situation outstrip or threaten to outstrip perceived resources to cope
stress and eating
- Conflicting results
- Stress eating paradox
- Inconsistent definitions of stress
- Difficult to measure
- Physical vs emotional stress
- Stress identity
- Confounding mechanisms
- General effect vs individual difference models
○ Greeno and Wing 1994
gender differences in eating and emotions
- Males
○ Meal type food preferences under stress- Females
○ High fat, highly palatable snack foods
○ Feel more guilty after consuming comfort foods
○ Suggested more susceptible to stress induced eating (Wasnick, Cheney and Chan, 2003)
- Females
do males eat less when stressed and women et more? studies
○ Grunberg and Straub 1992
○ Stone and Brownell 1994
inconsistent findings for gender differences in emotinal eating
○ Barrington, Beresford, McGregor and White 2014
§ Gender did not mediate relationship between perceived stress and dietary choices
○ Wardle et al., 2000
§ High workload periods associated with higher energy and fat intake across males and females
§ Restraint predicted tendency towards overeating in response to stress
§ Because females are more restrained
stress and eating - public speaking
- Anticipation of public speaking
○ Oliver, Wardle and Gibson 2000
○ 68 men and women stressed and unstressed
○ Eating behaviour, psych and physio characteristics of arousal assessed
○ Found little effect of restraint
○ Found stressed emotional eaters ate more sweet high fat foods and a more energy dense meal than unstressed and non-emotional eaters
stress and eating - physical vs reaction time
- Physical threat e.g. fear, cold pressor
○ Lots of evidence to indicate underconsumption (direct physio effects)- Lattimore and Caswell 2004
○ Active vs passive coping
§ RT tasks vs cold pressor test
○ Restrained and unrestrained ppts
○ Repeated measures design
- Lattimore and Caswell 2004
findings:
- restrained ate less in cold pressor and relaxation by unrestrained ate more in reaction time test
stress and eating - ego threat
- High self awareness
- Heatherton Herman and Polivy 1991
- Physical vs ego threat
- Restrained and unrestrained ppts
○ Anticipated electric shock (physical threat)
○ Completion of an unsolvable task (ego threat)
○ Anticipation of a speech - Taste test
Results:
- physical threat - decreased unrestrained eating and slightly increased restrained eating
- ego threat - increased restrained eating but no suppression on unrestrained eaters
- physical fear differs from general dysphoria
naturalistic studies - daily hassles
- Daily hassles (Newman, O’Connor and Connor 2007)
○ 50 female high vs low cortisol reactors
○ Cortisol reactivity assessed (modified trier social stress test)
○ Snack intake diaries for 2 weeks
○ Association between daily hassles and snacking but only for high reactors
○ Restraint, disinhibition, emotional and external eating associated with increased snacking in high reactors only
naturalistic studies - freshman 15
○ Vadeboncoeur, Townsend and foster 2015
○ Pliner and Saunders 2008
§ Role of restraint and accommodation
naturalistic studies - uk vs europe
○ Stress associated with greater risk of both weight gain and weight loss in UK students (Selachius, Hamer and Wardle 2007)
○ Effect strongest in females (restraint?)
○ Physical activity
hill et al 2022
- Systematic review and meta analysis of stress and eating behaviours in healthy adults
- 54 studies
- Stress associated with increased consumption of unhealthy foods and decreased consumption of healthy foods
- Restraint was identified as sig moderator of relationship
- Small effect sizes
Explanations: emotion and food choice
- Sensory - eating a food could alter mood via sensory/hedonic effects
- Physiological - mood/emotions influence physiological effect that change appetite or alteration of mood could occur via food choice (=also sensory/hedonic effects)
- Psychological - cognitive expectations; personality characteristics, low mood
Physiological explanations for stress induced eating:
HPA axis
Opioidergic mechanisms
- Reward (stimulate appetite of palatable foods) and adaptive responses to stress and discomfort
- Opioid mediated relief of stress (via food selection)
- Subject to chronic activation and downregulation
Psychological explanations for stress induced eating
escape theory
limited cog capacity hypothesis
escape theory explanation for stress-induced eating
- Heatherton and Baueister (1991)
- Overeating to shift attention from ego threatening stimulus causing aversive self-awareness
- Affect self regulation
- Distraction technique
- Associated with threats to self image (self esteem, mood)
Limited cognitive capacity hypothesis explanation for stress-induced eating
- Dieting and preoccupying cognitions associated with deficits in the functioning of WM components - e.g. Vreugdenberg, Bryan and kemps 2003
- Ward and Mann 2000; boon et al., 2002
§ Disinhibited intake occurs in restrained eaters if there are limitations on their cog capacity (demanding tasks), regardless of any emotional component
§ At that stage, effects on emotional eaters unexamined
cog demand vs ego threat
- Is ego threat a necessary precondition for disinhibition of restraint?
- Wallis and Heatherington (2004) compared effects of ego threat and cog demand vs a neutral condition using similar experimental manipulations (modifications of stroop colour naming task)
- 38 females
- 3 conditions
- Mood measured at baseline, post-task, post-snack
- 150g choc buttons
- DEBQ restraint and emotional eating
results:
- Overeating relative to control observed in both tasks
- Restrained eaters increased intake after both tasks relative to control
- Emotional eaters increased intake after ego threat task only
- Positive association between RT and intake in all conditions for high restraint/low emotional: confirms limited capacity hypothesis
Wallis and Heatherington 2009 study on ego threat and cog demand
- ego threat vs neutral
- predicted that ego-threat would guide restrained and emotional females towards a ‘forbidden’ snack food of chocolate rather than a low fat alternative of dried fruit
- not contingent upon neg mood
results:
- restraint status and snack intake after ego threat and neutral conditions
- similar amounts of both foods consumed in both conitions
- no effect of emotional eating
- restrained maintained restriction of chocolate in both conditions
unrestrained consumed similar amounts of dried fruit in each condition
- but restrained consumed sig less dried fruit in ego threat than in neutral task
cog demand vs ego threat conclusions
- Cog demand and ego threat are both associated with overeating in vulnerable individuals
- Effects depend on type and amount of food presented
- Variety; single forbidden food vs alongside LF alternative
- And on the characteristics of the consumer
- In restrained eaters stress alters intake via cog shifts
- In emotional, comfort eating (escape)
- Effects depend on type and amount of food presented
Further explanations for stress induced eating:
- Escape theory conceptually subsumed by more generalisable limited cog capacity model - lattimore and maxwell 2004
- Lowe and kral 2006
- Stress induced eating in restrained eaters may not be caused by stress or restraint
§ Non threatening cog loads also associated with disinhibition
§ Adequate explanation for stress induced eating remains elusive
- Stress induced eating in restrained eaters may not be caused by stress or restraint
- Lowe and kral 2006
