Teching Strategies

between food and mood in emotionally distressed individuals. In this relationship,

emotional distress, especially symptoms such as depression and fatigue, generates

cravings for sweet carbohydrate- and fat-rich snacks, such as ice cream, candy bars,

and desserts. The cravings cause a search for and consumption of these snack

foods, which results in a temporary mood improvement. Because the improvement

is temporary, the negative mood state returns and the cycle starts again.

This hypothesis was based on data revealing that individuals with seasonal

affective disorder (Rosenthal et al., 1984), overweight individuals (Wurtman &

Wurtman, 1986), individuals experiencing premenstrual syndrome (Bowen &

Grunberg, 1990), and some individuals experiencing unipolar depression report

cravings for sweet carbohydrate- and fat-rich snacks. Additionally, craving intensity

is correlated with emotional eating (Hill,Weaver, & Blundell, 1991) and with a

variety of mood and psychiatric symptom categories, such as depression, tension,

fatigue, somatatization, obsession-compulsion, and paranoid ideation, especially in

female carbohydrate-cravers (Christensen & Pettijohn, 2001). Female food-cravers

are more likely to have engaged in binge eating and to have attempted to control

their eating by dieting, vomiting, exercising, or using laxatives or diet pills and to

have had a lifetime history of alcohol abuse or dependency (Gendall, Sullivan,

Joyce, Fear, & Bulik, 1997). In sum, many individuals experiencing emotional distress

also experience cravings for sweet carbohydrate- and fat-rich snacks.

These individuals not only crave the sweet carbohydrate- and fat-rich foods,

but also report increasing and actually appear to increase their consumption of

these foods. Depressed individuals report increasing their consumption of these

snacks as they become depressed (Fernstrom, Krowinski, & Kupfer, 1987), and

they also consume significantly more carbohydrates, especially sweet carbohydrates,

than their nondepressed counterparts (Christensen & Somers, 1996). Similarly,

individuals with seasonal affective disorder (Krauchi, Wirz-Justice, &

Graw, 1990), obese individuals (Lieberman,Wurtman, & Chew, 1986), and individuals

with severe premenstrual syndrome (Dye, Warner, & Bancroft, 1995;

Rossignol, & Bonnlander, 1991) crave and preferentially consume sweeter carbohydrate-

and fat-rich foods, particularly in the form of snacks.

The relatively immediate effect of consumption of the sweet carbohydrateand

fat-rich snack food provides an improvement in mood. For example, Sayegh

and colleagues (1995) revealed that drinking a sweet, carbohydrate-rich drink

decreased self-reported depression, anger, and confusion in women with severe

premenstrual symptoms. Obese individuals experiencing cravings for sweet carbohydrate-

and fat-rich snacks reported a decline in depression after consuming

these snacks (Lieberman et al., 1986). Similarly, individuals with seasonal affective

disorder experienced a slight decline in fatigue following a carbohydrate-rich

meal, whereas individuals without seasonal affective disorder experienced an

increase in fatigue (Rosenthal et al., 1989). This mood improvement does not

last, however, and the pre-snack level of emotional disturbance returns, resulting

in a cycle of cravings and consumption of carbohydrate- and fat-rich foods. To

294 The Journal of Psychology

break this cycle, individuals must permanently ameliorate the emotional distress

(e.g., through the administration of psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy),

although there is some evidence (Fernstrom & Kupfer, 1988) indicating that

antidepressants can increase cravings for sweets. For some individuals, a dietary

manipulation that eliminates caffeine and added sucrose from the diet (Christensen

& Burrows, 1990) can also improve the mood.

Evidence supporting this cyclical model of emotional distress and eating

behavior is scant. Also, prior research suggesting that emotional distress causes an

increase in consumption of carbohydrate- and fat-rich foods has come from either

retrospective reports (Fernstrom et al., 1987), comparison of distressed and nondistressed

individuals (Christensen & Somers, 1996), or assessment of the dietary

intake of distressed individuals (Lieberman et al., 1986). Only in the area of premenstrual

syndrome has there been a systematic demonstration of individuals

increasing their consumption of carbohydrate- and fat-rich foods as they develop

the emotionally distressing premenstrual symptoms (Bowen & Grunberg, 1990). To

conclude that emotional distress leads to an altered preference for sweet carbohydrate-

and fat-rich foods would require a demonstration that a distressed mood state

results

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