Is comfort food really comforting? Mechanisms underlying stress-induced eating

Abstract

Overeating behaviors are nowadays a worldwide issue, and cumulative evidence shows that stress induces excessive pursuit of highly palatable food. However, the role of stress in this phenomenon remains poorly understood. The classic interpretation is that excessive eating is an attempt to reduce the aversive feeling associated with the stress response through the hedonic properties of highly palatable food. In this review, we propose an alternative hypothesis based on theoretical models developed in the framework of reward processing. We review recent literature on animal and human studies suggesting that stress reduces hedonic pleasure during highly palatable food consumption and increases the control that the habitual and Pavlovian systems exert on food-seeking behaviors over the control exerted by the goal-directed system. From this literature, we propose that (a) stress amplifies automatic attentional orienting toward stimuli associated with palatable food (i.e., Pavlovian stimuli), rendering them more likely to be perceived; and (b) once perceived, these stimuli trigger stress-amplified motivational bursts and the control that the habitual system exerts on food-seeking behaviors. We hypothesize that stress-induced eating is driven by habits and Pavlovian motivational bursts, independent of hedonic pleasure or even of the goal of reducing the stress-related aversive state. Thus, if a stressed person encounters an environmental stimulus associated with highly palatable food, this may trigger excessive pursuit of highly palatable food, whether or not the food elicits liking during its consumption.

The anterior medial temporal lobes: Their role in food intake and body weight regulation

“…In contrast, in participants under low chronic stress, in response to high calorie food pictures relative to low calorie ones, the connectivity between the amygdala and regions involved in executive functions (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) was increased compared to participants under high chronic stress. Taken together, these results could explain why stress is associated with unhealthy food intake and poor eating habits (e.g., [129]), which could eventually lead to obesity.…”

Measuring wanting and liking from animals to humans: A systematic review

“…In some cases, the organism's state can increase both cue-triggered wanting and the liking experience during reward consumption; for instance, hunger increases the relevance of a food reward that becomes both more wanted and liked (Havermans et al, 2009). In other cases, the organism's state can selectively increase wanting without modifying liking; for instance, stress prioritizes reward relevance (Leyton, 2010), increasing cue-triggered wanting for a particular reward but not liking during reward consumption (see Pool et al, 2015c for a review). Berridge and Robinson (2003) proposed that wanting and liking can be further classified depending on whether they are processed at an implicit or explicit level (see also Anselme and Robinson, 2015).…”

“…Several researchers agree that the incentive salience hypothesis has important explanatory power in the understanding of various human behaviors, in particular problematic behavior such as overeating, addictive consumption of substances or pathological gambling (Finlayson et al, 2007b;Goldstein et al, 2010;Pool et al, 2015c;Wölfling et al, 2011). Nonetheless, results of studies investigating the incentive salience hypothesis with food reward in humans led to skeptical conclusions being drawn concerning the existence of wanting and liking as two distinct components with separate influences (Havermans, 2011(Havermans, ,2012.…”

“…Several scholars have considered the independence of wanting and liking as a potential mechanism underlying a variety of human behaviors that negatively impact well-being such as overeating, pathological gambling and the consumption of addictive substances (Finlayson et al, 2007b;Pool et al, 2015c;Tibboel et al, 2011;Wölfling et al, 2011). However, human experiments have led to contradictory results, opening a debate on the existence of two dissociable components in human reward processing (Havermans, 2011(Havermans, , 2012.…”

Perceiving the World Through Group-Colored Glasses: A Perceptual Model of Intergroup Relations

“…We believe this is a promising avenue of research. For instance, one may want to investigate the relationship between identities, on one hand, and food perception and consumption in stress episodes, on the other (e.g., Pool, Delplanque, Coppin, & Sander, 2015). We predict that in such contexts, where excessive pursuit of highcalorie foods may be present, individuals may use food consumption as a strategy to restore their threatened identity.…”