Food for Thought: How Over-Thinking About Food Can Cause Diabetes

Physiology & Behavior, 2020

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einstein (São Paulo), 2022

Food desires are defined as motivations that drive the search for and consumption of food. However, when domains of intensity and urgency are activated, these desires can become intense (i.e. food craving), being then characterized by episodes or cognitive events loaded with affectivity, in which food is associated with obtaining pleasure or relief, which is the only attentional focus. Specificity and urgency mark the differentiation between food desires and cravings. The process of elaboration with vivid images, the retention in working memory, the emergence of a negative affect state (awareness of the lack), and a committed attentional focus to seek food are characterized as stages of an episode of food craving. Individuals with eating disorders have the lowest levels of food craving when it comes to anorexia nervosa and the subsequent increase to bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. Some environmental and cultural triggers and internal factors of cognition and emotions play a crucial role in the emergence of food craving episodes. The external factors include positive/negative events, food environment, advertisements, cultural beliefs about food, specific locations, and food itself. The internal factors comprise dietary restriction, food reward, impulsivity/inflexibility, emotions, thoughts and feelings about food, hunger/satiety/appetite, and anxious/depressive symptoms. Treatment involves the association of flexibility, awareness, and questioning strategies about dietary practices based on three principles: unconditional permission to eat, eating more for physical than emotional reasons, and tuning in with the body’s signs of hunger and satiety (intuitive eating).

2015

In the Western world, overweight and obesity rates are high and continue to rise. Globally, 35% of adults are overweight, and 11% are obese (WHO, 2013). Obesity is related to many detrimental health consequences and a reduced quality of life . Examples include cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and psychological problems such as depression (e.g., . Ultimately, the cause of obesity is an energy imbalance, that is, more calories are consumed than are expended . This energy imbalance seems mainly due to the overconsumption of high-caloric palatable foods (Swinburn, Jolley, Kremer, Salbe, & Ravussin, 2006; Swinburn et al., 2009;. A more interesting question is why so many people have an unfavourable energy balance, which led them to be overweight, or even obese. So, why do so many people overconsume high-caloric palatable foods, while it is common knowledge that these foods are detrimental for your health and waistline? An obvious possibility seems that people's control of homeostasis is disturbed . However, at the very least, this homeostatic explanation is not sufficient, and non-homeostatic factors have been shown to play an important role . That is, people consume foods because of the expected experience of reward. Homeostatic and non-homeostatic factors may interact, as foods may for example become more attractive when one is hungry (e.g., Uher, Treasure, Heining, Brammer, & Campbell, 2006). So, an important contribution to the obesity epidemic likely is so-called hedonic hunger . That is, "some individuals experience frequent thoughts, feelings and urges about food in the absence of any short-or long-term energy deficit." (Lowe & Butryn, p. 432). Desire for food is reflected in the brain as food-cue-elicited activity in brain regions that are involved in reward processing, as listed in Frankort et al. (2012, p. 627): "the amygdala,

Eating Behaviors, 2015

In the current study we explored the role of desire thinking in predicting binge eating independently of Body Mass Index, negative affect and irrational food beliefs. A sample of binge eaters (n = 77) and a sample of nonbinge eaters (n = 185) completed the following self-report instruments: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Irrational Food Beliefs Scale, Desire Thinking Questionnaire, and Binge Eating Scale. Mann-Whitney U tests revealed that all variable scores were significantly higher for binge eaters than non-binge eaters. A logistic regression analysis indicated that verbal perseveration was a predictor of classification as a binge eater over and above Body Mass Index, negative affect and irrational food beliefs. A hierarchical regression analysis, on the combined sample, indicated that verbal perseveration predicted levels of binge eating independently of Body Mass Index, negative affect and irrational food beliefs. These results highlight the possible role of desire thinking as a risk factor for binge eating.

Behavioural Brain Research, 2013

• We measured brain responses to food temptations in successful dieters.

Appetite, 2016

Attention bias for food could be a cognitive pathway to overeating in obesity and restrained eating. Yet, empirical evidence for individual differences (e.g., in restrained eating and body mass index) in attention bias for food is mixed. We tested experimentally if temporarily induced health versus palatability mindsets influenced attention bias for food, and whether restrained eating moderated this relation. After manipulating mindset (health vs. palatability) experimentally, food-related attention bias was measured by eye-movements (EM) and response latencies (RL) during a visual probe task depicting high-calorie food and non-food. Restrained eating was assessed afterwards. A significant interaction of mindset and restrained eating on RL bias emerged, β = 0.36, t(58) = 2.05, p = 0.045: A health mindset - as compared to a palatability mindset - attenuated attention bias for high-caloric food only in participants with higher eating restraint. No effects were observed on EM biases. T...

British Journal of Health Psychology, 1998

Objectives. Two studies examined the cognitive regulation of restrained eaters' eating behaviour. It was hypothesized that restrained dieters should have more restraint-related cognitions in the presence of food stimuli than unrestrained eaters, whereas restrained non-dieters should occupy an intermediate position. The correlation between cognition and consumption should he zero fot unrestrained eaters and negative fot restrained eaters.

Hunger is a poorly defined cognition, assumed to motivate overeating, but there is no firm evidence that the intensity of a sense of hunger is related to overweight. Recent research has suggested instead that irregular eating habits, as deriving from dieting, emotional stressors or other causes may have a role in the weight gain of obese people. These "borderline eating behaviours" (or BEB), targeted in cognitive behavioural therapy of obesity, were found associated to the body mass index both in normal and in over­weight subjects in previous studies, using a specific scale called Senical. This study aimed at exploring the role of the sense of "unbearable hunger" on these eating irregularities, as measured with Senical, which provides an overall measure of BEB. Method: Senical has been administered to a sample of 365 uni­versity stu­dents, together with other self-report measures; one item of Senical has been used to measure the frequency of the feeling of "unbearable hunger". An Ancova performed on the total Senical scores showed a linear increase of BEB along with the frequency of perceived "unbearable hunger", independently form age and gender. An item analysis of the Senical scale, performed with Chi square, showed that 15 out of 27 of these behavi­oural and emotional responses comprising the scale were associated with the sense of hunger, such as to diet or try to fast, to eat at irregu­lar times, to eat more than usual when in emotional state, to eat quickly and not to taste the food, and to worry about weight increase. The "sense of hunger" may contribute to disrupt the eating habits, and maintain many of the eating irregularities associated to weight gain called "borderline eating beha­viours". These results suggest that the cogni­tion of hunger is worth to be targeted in the treat­ment of obese people.

EMBO reports, 2012

Nutrients, 2025

Background. Food addiction is often linked to overeating and difficulty in controlling eating habits. At the same time, food addiction is often associated with intense eating-related thoughts and emotional eating behaviors. However, despite extensive research on food addiction, the psychological processes that contribute to these outcomes have not been fully examined. Consequently, this study aims to fill that gap by investigating the influence of eating-related thoughts, as well as emotional eating behaviors that may precede episodes of uncontrolled eating. Methods. A cross-sectional design was used. A sample of 467 individuals was enrolled from the general population. Participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires. A sequential mediation analysis with latent variables (i.e., structural equation modeling; SEM) using 5000 bootstrap samples and observed variables was performed. Results. The proposed model provides good fit indices. Indeed, food addiction predicts uncontrolled eating behaviors through eating-related thoughts (p < 0.001), which were also significantly associated with the emotion-driven eating patterns (p < 0.001), revealing a fully mediated model explaining 61.6% of the outcome variance (R 2 = 0.616). Discussion. The findings underscore the critical influence of cognitive factors (i.e., eating-related thoughts) in driving maladaptive coping mechanisms like emotional eating. Moreover, emotional eating may act as a precursor to behaviors associated with overeating, which are often rooted in food addiction. Conclusions. Recognizing the central role of thoughts and emotions can help clinicians develop more targeted psychological interventions for those experiencing food addiction symptoms.