Background: Emotional eaters eat to relieve their emotions. However, food also contains esthetic information. People generally perceive ugly food as unhealthy and unpalatable. Does the esthetic information of food influence an emotional eater's desire for food in a negative emotional state? In particular, do they have the same lower eating intentions for low esthetic food as non-emotional eaters?
Objective/design/measures: Based on these questions, the present study examined whether the esthetic value of food influences emotional eaters' desires for food. The experiment used a 2 (eating type: emotional eating vs. non-emotional eating) × 2 (food style: high esthetic vs. low esthetic) mixed experimental design. We measured the emotional and non-emotional eaters' eating intentions for different esthetic foods when experiencing negative emotions.
Results: The results showed that emotional eaters have higher intention to eat high esthetic foods. However, they did not have a high eating intention for all foods, and their eating intention did not differ from that of non-emotional eaters when faced with low esthetic food.
Conclusion: In conclusion, food esthetic value can affect individual eating intentions. Even for emotional eaters who are in a negative mood, they also did not have a higher eating intention for low esthetic food compared with no-emotional eater.
Level of evidence: Level II: controlled trial without randomization.
Keywords: Eating intention; Emotional eater; Food esthetic; Negative emotion.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.