About 35% of U.S. adults engage in comfort eating, defined as increasing one’s food intake or eating high-
calorie/fat/sugar foods in response to stress or other negative emotions. Comfort eating predicts subsequent
weight gain and also mediates links between stress and depressive symptoms with Body Mass Index (BMI).
Beyond effects on BMI, many unhealthy comfort foods are ultra-processed foods high in saturated fat, sugar,
and salt—foods that heighten risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Moreover, experiments manipulating comfort
eating do not evidence any meaningful causal benefits of this behavior for psychophysiological stress
responses. These adverse characteristics of comfort eating have motivated interventions; however, efforts to
curb comfort eating have neglected to attempt to prevent its initial development in early life—an approach that
could minimize negative health impacts across the lifespan. Furthermore, intervention reviews have concluded
that resulting effect sizes are often small (e.g., Cohen’s d = 0.12 to 0.26) or inconsistent (Cohen’s d = -0.17 to
0.04), and scholars have called for additional research to determine which intervention methods are most
appropriate for which individuals. Relatedly, although self-efficacy—how confident people are that they can
perform a certain behavior—is a robust predictor of both behavioral intentions and actual behavior in other
literatures, little is known about which factors are associated with self-efficacy for comfort eating cessation. To
address these critical gaps in knowledge, we will analyze data from the Eating in America Study collected from
December 2019 to January 2020 among a national census-matched sample of 2,022 U.S. adults age 18 and
older, carrying out the following specific aims: 1) Characterize the etiology of comfort eating from a life course
perspective using a mixed-methods approach; 2) Identify demographic, comfort food, belief, developmental,
and psychosocial factors associated with self-efficacy to quit comfort eating; and 3) Determine which sub-
populations may be at elevated risk for poor health outcomes associated with comfort eating. This research will
generate new knowledge regarding how stages in the lifespan, life events, and the familial environment may
play a role in the origins of comfort eating. Furthermore, this project will be the first in a large, national sample
to examine self-efficacy to quit comfort eating and the key factors that explain it—data that could reveal new
levers for influencing this key construct and thereby, comfort eating itself. Finally, this investigation will provide
new insights into which sub-populations may be at greater risk of the poor health that comes with comfort
eating. Equipped with these novel insights generated with support from the NIDDK (PAR-21-313), in the next
stage of her transition to research independence, the PI (Dr. Finch) will move forward with her long-term goal
of developing and testing a new generation of targeted, tailored, and innovative comfort eating prevention and
intervention techniques. For instance, novel techniques may include prevention in childhood or adolescence by
targeting parental behaviors, and/or changing beliefs about comforting capacities of comfort eating.
