Schneider-Worthington, C. R., Smith, K. E., Roemmich, J. N., & Salvy, S.-J. (2022). External food cue responsiveness and emotional eating in adolescents : A multimethod study. Appetite, 168, 105789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105789 : a reading report, by Marie Pontiggia and Caroline Boyadjian (M2 PCPI)
“Adolescence is an important time in the emergence of external and emotional eating behaviors.” Schneider-Worthington et al. (2022).
The article by Schneider-Worthington et al. (2022), investigate two types of feeding :
-External eating: a greater tendency to eat in response to external food information (sight/smell of pleasant foods). Indeed, these stimuli strongly influence us and drive our motivation to eat.
-Emotional eating : eating more or less than usual when we feel an emotion (positive or negative) rather than eating according to our feelings of hunger/satiety. Indeed, an emotion is internal information that can interfere with our awareness of hunger/satiety.
When the emotion felt is negative, emotional eating can then be seen as a way to regulate, cope with or avoid it (Zeeck et al., 2010). Emotional regulation can be defined as the set of processes responsible for controlling, evaluating and modifying emotions, particularly their intensity and duration, to achieve one’s goals (Svaldi et al., 2019). For example, if we feel anxiety, food can be used to reduce its intensity and shorten the duration of this feeling, so that we can get back to doing our activities.
What are the risks associated with these types of food ?
First, it is important to be vigilant when the individual has high external feeding as it is linked to maladaptive eating behaviors and weight gain.
Secondly, emotional eating should also be carefully monitored, as several studies have shown that negative emotions are linked to poorer food choices, including the consumption of energy-dense foods, and to obesity. It is important to note that poor emotional regulation skills play a role in the development and maintenance of eating disorders (Zeeck et al., 2010).
Thus, these two types of eating, induced by information from outside (external eating) or from within ourselves (emotional eating), can occur simultaneously and lead to maladaptive eating behaviors and weight gain. The Schneider-Worthington et al. (2022) study aims to investigate these two types of eating specifically in adolescents.
The importance of adolescence :
Adolescence is a time when emotional reactions to events are more intense and the propensity to eat or not to eat in the face of emotions (i.e., adopt emotional eating) emerges at this same time of life. These two elements combined increase the risk of using maladaptive strategies to regulate emotions, such as eating. If regulation by eating becomes repetitive and if the teenager is not able to regulate in any other way, then this strategy becomes maladaptive.
This period is therefore particularly important to support if we want to avoid the teenager’s inappropriate use of food to cope with his or her emotions.
The study :
This study aims to assess how eating in response to external food stimuli (external eating) influences the relationship between emotions and eating, specifically in adolescents.
In this study, conducted on 78 adolescents (39 pairs of siblings of the same biological sex but of different weights), emotions and feeding episodes were recorded in real time and in the participants’ natural environment while reactivity to food stimuli was tested in the laboratory.
The emotional eating assessment lasted 7 days and the adolescents were at home. They received a message every 2 hours (a total of 4 messages on weekdays and 7 on weekend days) asking if they were eating (yes/no response) and if they were feeling happy, sad, frustrated, angry, stressed, annoyed about something, or trying to cope with a problem (yes/no response for each proposition).
The researchers then assessed the increase in eating after an exposure to food stimuli. They set up the following experiment: they separated the participants into two groups (control/experimental). At the beginning, the experiment started in the same way for all participants, who were fasting: they had to read a magazine without any food-related information. While the control group continues reading, the experimental group is presented with slices of pizza (food stimulus). They are asked to think about the smell and taste of the pizza. Then, both groups are allowed to eat as much pizza as they want. The effect of the food stimuli on eating is the difference in the amount eaten between the two groups.
Results show that women, younger participants, and those with lower BMIs report more eating episodes than men, older participants, and those with higher BMIs.
Regarding emotional eating, we observe that men have a lower probability of eating when they feel negative emotions and conversely an increase in this probability when they feel positive emotions. On the other hand, women have a similar probability of eating, regardless of the presence or absence of emotion (negative or positive).
Moreover, when we add reactivity to external food stimuli, the probabilities of eating described above are even more pronounced for individuals with high reactivity. teenagers with low reactivity to external food stimuli also show these same probabilities but the association is statistically weaker.
To summarize, teenagers who are highly responsive to external food stimuli are those who are most responsive to internal emotional stimuli. Second, emotions are associated with the likelihood of eating (in different senses depending on whether the emotion is positive or negative), and this association is stronger for adolescents with a strong response to external food stimuli.
Perspectives :
We have presented above the importance of taking into consideration external and emotional eating from adolescence onwards, particularly with a view to understanding and preventing weight gain and eating disorders.
Since difficulties are related to altered awareness of hunger/satiety (e.g., the subject’s interpretation that he/she is hungry or has not eaten enough when this is not the case physiologically) due to external information (smell/sight of food) and emotions, work on focusing and becoming aware of one’s true level of hunger and satiety may be relevant to adapting food intake.
When an emotional eating problem occurs, it may be wise to refer the person to resources (such as a psychologist trained in emotion-centered therapies) that will help him or her learn new emotional regulation skills so that the individual can use strategies that are more appropriate than eating to manage his or her emotions. The enrichment of the repertoire of emotional regulation strategies will help prevent the emergence of eating disorders.
Sources :
-Schneider-Worthington, C. R., Smith, K. E., Roemmich, J. N., & Salvy, S.-J. (2022). External food cue responsiveness and emotional eating in adolescents : A multimethod study. Appetite, 168, 105789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105789
-Svaldi, J., Werle, D., Naumann, E., Eichler, E., & Berking, M. (2019). Prospective associations of negative mood and emotion regulation in the occurrence of binge eating in binge eating disorder. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 115, 61‑68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2019.05.005
-Zeeck, A., Stelzer, N., Linster, H. W., Joos, A., & Hartmann, A. (2010). Emotion and eating in binge eating disorder and obesity. European Eating Disorders Review, n/a-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/erv.1066
Key terms : adolescence ; emotional alimentation ; attention ; external food cue ; gender differences
Words we have learned :
-Rife : rempli de, en abondance
-Overriding : outrepassant
-Conversely : inversement
-Devoid : dépourvu
-Misnomers : terme inapproprié
-Proclivity : propension
By Marie Pontiggia and Caroline Boyadjian
M2 PCPI