Although participants endorse pleasure and positive feelings as reasons for consuming comfort food, expectations related to psychological coping—particularly alleviating boredom, managing negative affect, and enhancing cognitive competence—are more strongly associated with how often they engage in comfort eating, according to a recent study.

In a cross-sectional study, researchers examined whether participants’ expectations about comfort food were associated with the frequency of comfort food consumption. A total of 214 adults (mean age, 38.7 years) who reported eating comfort food at least occasionally completed an online survey. Participants identified their primary comfort food, reported the frequency of comfort eating over the short term (past 2 weeks) and the long term, and rated 45 expectation items categorized into 5 subscales: manage negative affect, pleasurable and rewarding, enhances cognitive competence, alleviates boredom, and positive feelings.

Participants reported consuming their primary comfort food a mean of 2.89 times and any comfort food a mean of 6.38 times over the previous 2 weeks. For long-term behavior, “about once a month” was the most common response for primary comfort food (28.9%), while “several times per week” was most frequently selected for all comfort foods (29.4%). Preferences were nearly evenly divided between sweet (44.4%) and savory (50%) items. There were no significant gender differences in consumption frequency or preference.

Ratings on the expectation subscales indicated that pleasurable and rewarding and positive feelings received the highest endorsements. However, these subscales were not significantly associated with frequency of consumption in bivariate or multivariate analyses. Instead, expectations associated with alleviates boredom, manage negative affect, and enhances cognitive competence were significantly and positively associated with all frequency-related variables. Alleviates boredom emerged as the most consistent predictor across bivariate correlations and multiple regression models.

The researchers concluded that these findings may have implications for developing interventions targeting comfort eating by addressing emotion regulation and situational triggers rather than hedonic reinforcement.

The study was conducted by Fei Wu and colleagues at the School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. No conflicts of interest were reported.

Source: Nutrients