Food cravings in everyday life: An EMA study on snack-related thoughts, cravings, and consumption

Abstract

Food craving refers to an intense desire to consume a specific food and is regularly experienced by the majority of individuals. Yet, there are interindividual differences in the frequency and intensity of food craving experiences, which is often referred to as trait food craving. The characteristics and consequences of trait and state food craving have mainly been investigated in questionnaire-based and laboratory studies, which may not reflect individuals' behavior in daily life. In the present study, sixty-one participants completed the Food Cravings Questionnaire-Trait-reduced (FCQ-T-r) as measure of trait food craving, followed by seven days of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), during which they reported snack-related thoughts, craving intensity, and snack consumption at five times per day. Results showed that 86 percent of reported snacks were high-caloric, with chocolate-containing foods being the most often reported snacks. Individuals with high FCQ-T-r scores (high trait food cravers, HCs) thought more often about high-calorie than low-calorie snacks whereas no differences were found in individuals with low FCQ-T-r scores (low trait food cravers, LCs). Further, the relationship between craving intensity and snack-related thoughts was stronger in HCs than in LCs. Higher craving intensity was associated with more consumption of snacks and again this relationship was stronger in HCs than in LCs. Finally, more snack-related thoughts were related to more frequent consumption of snacks, independent of trait food craving. Thus, HCs are more prone to think about high-calorie snacks in their daily lives and to consume more snack foods when they experience intense cravings, which might be indicative of a heightened responding towards high-calorie foods. Thus, trait-level differences as well as snack-related thoughts should be targeted in dietary interventions.

Mobile Ecological Momentary Diet Assessment Methods for Behavioral Research: Systematic Review (Preprint)

“…A total of 10 studies described signal-contingent mEMDA methods used in nutritionrelated research [74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83]. Additional approach details were extracted from multiple related journal articles [79,[84][85][86][87][88][89].…”

“…Of these 7 studies, 5 used mobile apps [75,76,79,80,82], 1 used SMS text messaging [74], and 1 used a web-based survey [83]. Two other studies used a wrist-worn electronic diary device [77,78] and another study used an iPod Touch [81].…”

“…Three of these 5 studies assessed dietary intake "since the last prompt" at varied time intervals [77,82,83], 1 study assessed dietary intake in the past 2 hours [76], and 1 study assessed dietary intake in real-time [75]. The other 5 studies prompted surveys at fixed intervals [74,[78][79][80][81], and frequencies ranged from 4 to 14 prompts per day. Two of these 5 studies assessed dietary intake "since the last prompt" at varied time intervals [79,81], 2 studies assessed dietary intake in the past 1-3.5 hour(s) [78,80], and 1 study assessed dietary intake in real-time [74].…”

“…The other 5 studies prompted surveys at fixed intervals [74,[78][79][80][81], and frequencies ranged from 4 to 14 prompts per day. Two of these 5 studies assessed dietary intake "since the last prompt" at varied time intervals [79,81], 2 studies assessed dietary intake in the past 1-3.5 hour(s) [78,80], and 1 study assessed dietary intake in real-time [74]. The sampling duration for the 10 studies ranged from 4 days to 6 weeks, with the most common duration being 7 days (n=4).…”

“…Seven signal-contingent studies reported on the occurrence or frequency of (targeted) food or food group intakes at the day-level [74-76, 78, 80, 81, 83]. Three studies focused on snack intake only [78,79,83]. Only 2 studies estimated energy intake [79,82].…”