Factors Affecting Eating Behaviour: Food Taste and Self-Reported Emotional Motivations Related to Mood

Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Research in Social Sciences

Year: 2019

DOI:

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Factors Affecting Eating Behaviour: Food Taste and Self-Reported Emotional Motivations Related to Mood

Elena Bartkiene1, Daiva Zadeike2, Grazina Juodeikiene2, Laura Jarutiene1, Vita Lele1, Darius Cernauskas2, Dovile Klupsaite2, Vesta Steibliene1, Virginija Adomaitiene1

ABSTRACT: 

An eating behaviouris complex and is affected by both mood and emotions, and also food consumption. The interaction between mood, emotional state and eating behaviours is varied, and it was suggested a bidirectional link between good nutrition and psychological health, as well as that persons with a healthy diet are less likely to have depression or develop depression. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relation between the social factors and their perception, emotional motivations and selection of information sourcesabout a healthy eating. In addition, to evaluate possible relation of the food choice and people‘s mood, the initial study about the emotions induced by the different tastes of food for people’s was performed. It was established that the gender, age and education are the significant factors on the most of the emotional motivations, such as eating if to feel good or on perceptions about a healthy eating. The results obtained by using FaceReader software showed higher sensibility, than the evaluation by using hedonic scale, which can be influenced by emotional experience of participants, induced by food in the past. These results suggest that the type and variety of foods offered influences the link between mood and eating. Further research should aim to replicate and extend these findings, with a view to informing potential interventions for depression-related eating. Finally, the FaceReader is a very promising technique to detect differences in facial emotion expressions induced by different taste of food for different mood people’s groups.

Keywords: food choice; gender; age; psychological health, FaceReader software