Eating Motives and Other Factors Predicting Emotional Overeating during COVID-19 in a Sample of Polish Adults.

We hypothesised that the higher levels of emotion-related predictors (eating motive in the form of affect regulation and COVID-19-related stress) would be associated with higher emotional overeating, after accounting for the effects of demographic variables (gender and BMI) and other eating motives (visual- and attitude-related predictors: liking, pleasure, visual appeal; body- and health-related predictors: need and hunger, health, weight control). Participants (N = 868; Mage = 33.53 years, SD = 11.98) completed: the Eating Motivation Survey, the Emotional Overeating Questionnaire, a COVID-19-related stress measure and a socio-demographic survey. The final step of the regression with emotional overeating was significant; affect regulation and COVID-19-related stress were significantly related to emotional overeating (ΔF p < 0.001, Adj. ΔR2 = 0.13). During the COVID-19 pandemic, eating can, on the one hand, help to cope with the current difficult situation and the negative emotions associated with it; on the other hand, frequent use of this tendency can lead to rigid regulation of affect and use of this mechanism as the dominant mechanism. Therefore, limited social contact, related disruptions in daily activities and stress resulting from COVID-19 should generate appropriate interventions, not necessarily focusing only on emotional eating, but also on the resources of the individual. It is worth encouraging specialists to implement alternative methods of contact with their patients, e.g., online.

COVID-19 Stress and Food Intake: Protective and Risk Factors for Stress-Related Palatable Food Intake in U.S. Adults.

(1) Background: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused disruptions to what people eat, but the pandemic's impact on diet varies between individuals. The goal of our study was to test whether pandemic-related stress was associated with food intake, and whether relationships between stress and intake were modified by appetitive and cognitive traits. (2) Methods: We cross-sectionally surveyed 428 adults to examine current intake frequency of various food types (sweets/desserts, savory snacks, fast food, fruits, and vegetables), changes to food intake during the pandemic, emotional overeating (EOE), cognitive flexibility (CF), and COVID-19-related stress. Models tested associations of stress, EOE, and CF with food intake frequency and changes to intake. (3) Results: Models demonstrated that the positive relationship between stress and intake of sweets/desserts was stronger with higher EOE, while the positive relationship between stress and intake of chips/savory snacks was weaker with higher CF. Higher EOE was associated with greater risk of increased intake of palatable foods. (4) Conclusions: Findings suggest that emotional overeating may escalate stress-associated intake of high-sugar foods, and cognitive flexibility may attenuate stress-associated intake of high-fat foods. Differences in appetitive and cognitive traits may explain changes to and variability in food intake during COVID-19, and efforts to decrease emotional overeating and encourage cognitive flexibility could help lessen the effect of COVID-19-related stress on energy dense food intake.