Influence of Emotional Determinants on the Food Choices of the Portuguese

Abstract

Food choices are influenced by many factors, such as emotional. When people eat, driven by emotional factors, they often lose control, which may lead to eating disorders. Therefore, this work aimed at studying the influence that emotional determinants had on people's food choices. It was undertaken a descriptive cross-sectional study by means of a questionnaire on a non-probabilistic sample of 1314 participants. The data was collected among a sample of the Portuguese population and measured if people´s food choices were influenced by emotional determinants. The results revealed that the participants' food choices were, in general, slightly influenced by emotional determinants (mean scores between-0.5 and 0.5, on a scale from-2 to +2). There were found significant differences in all of the variables under study. The participants, who already experienced an episode of binge-eating, were the ones that obtained the highest mean score (0.63±0.79), meaning that in this case those participants' food choices were influenced by emotional determinants. These results support the premise that emotional determinants are influenced by the characteristics of each individual and also the existence of a positive association between emotional eating and the presence of eating disorders, especially, binge-eating.

Building Image Through Food Choice: The Effects of Unfamiliar Companion, Impression Management, and Emotional Eating on Food Portion

“…Being alone facilitates individuals with EmE taking more food than being with an unfamiliar dining companion, possibly because being alone is perceived as not requiring impression management tactics while eating. The findings support previous research that being alone encourages individuals with EmE to eat more (Guiné et al, 2019). Additionally, this study complements the research of Godor (2020), which called for research investigating EmE with unfamiliar peers using objective measurement (Godor et al, 2020).…”

“…On the other hand, high-calorie foods, such as pizza, are perceived as more satiating with larger portions (Cobo et al, 2022;Zahrah et al, 2023). Consequently, it has been demonstrated that EmE is frequently linked to overeating and a high body mass index (Guiné et al, 2019). However, are there other factors that make individuals with EmE restrict their eating?…”

“…Individuals with EmE have a tendency to consume excessive amounts of foods high in sugar (Grajek et al, 2022;Zahrah et al, 2023), fat (Alharbi & Alharbi, 2023;Bui et al, 2021), and carbohydrates (Nguyen-Michel et al, 2007) without experiencing hunger (Devonport et al, 2019). Thus, EmE is often linked to overweight and obesity (Annisa & Zahra, 2021;Guiné et al, 2019). Conversely, there are interesting findings discussing the influence of emotions on the small portion of food eaten by individuals (Cobo et al, 2022).…”

Demographic, Anthropometric and Food Behavior Data towards Healthy Eating in Romania

“…Regarding the number of hours/day spent r in front of the TV or computer, we obtained positive correlations for both age and BMI. (1) N = number of participants; (2) BMI = body mass index; (3) p < 0.05 is considered significant; (4) Spearman test; (5) Spearman correlation; (6) Pearson test; (7) r = Pearson correlation; (8) NA = not applicable; this group was excluded from the analysis due to low number of cases; (9) T-test; (10) Kruskal-Wallis test; (11) ANOVA test; (12) Mann-Whitney test; r x = correlation between hours/day spent watching TV or in front of the computer and age; r y = correlation between hours/day spent watching TV or in front of the computer and BMI; (12) N.P. = not performed, because it is not relevant for the current research to compare BMI according to different pathologies (obesity is included, and there are subjects with more than one of the conditions asked).…”

“…In the scientific literature, many variables have been used to analyze consumer behavior in the food market, the most frequent being the socio-demographic factors, motivations and attitudes, religious traits, and cultural and social background, along with geographical variability and lifestyle [6][7][8].…”