The Role of Comfort Food in Emotional Regulation: A Narrative Review of Eating Behaviours And Psychological Outcomes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67336/h68psm29Keywords:
comfort foods, emotional eating, stress eating, emotion regulation, psychological distress.Abstract
The aim of this narrative review is to review all peer-reviewed evidence regarding psychological, behavioural and neurobiological consequences of eating comfort food and emotional eating, and examine the effectiveness of psychological interventions focused on comfort food and emotional eating.
Inclusion criteria: English-language, peer-reviewed systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and empirical studies that investigated emotional eating, stress-related eating or comfort food consumption in human populations, published through mid-2024. Studies that did not include emotional eating, animal studies and non-peer-reviewed publications were excluded.
Data sources: PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar. Manual reference screening was used to identify additional records, as well as citation tracking.
Synthesis methods: there was significant variation in the research designs, populations and outcome measures used, and thus a narrative synthesis approach was chosen. Findings were organized around the five different emotional regulation mechanisms, the five different neurobiological pathways, the three different demographic moderators, the three different physical health outcomes, and the efficacy of four intervention types.
Results: twenty peer-reviewed studies were included in the final synthesis. Emotional eating was significantly more common in females, adolescents, and individuals with higher BMI. It has been repeatedly linked to depression, anxiety, binge eating, and eating ultra-processed foods. The activation of the dopaminergic reward pathway and HPA axis dysregulation were identified as key neurobiological mechanisms. Overall, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) had the highest level of evidence for intervention, followed by mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Conclusions: emotional eating is a biopsychosocial phenomenon that needs multi-level interventions, such as changing emotional regulation, stress management and cognitive restructuring. Longitudinal, neurobiological studies, and standardized measurement systems are needed in future research.
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