Do you find yourself binging on high-fat or sugary foods, as you think it may help you deal with emotional turmoil? If the latest study is to be believed, there is science behind this behavior. Reacting to emotional events like break-ups, tends to involve reaching for the nearest unhealthy snack which is called "hedonic consumption", said Nitika Garg, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of New South Wales' (UNSW) at Sydney Business School.
"When you engage in 'hedonic consumption', you always have some kind of emotion attached to it," she added.
When you are sad or a bit low, you tend to lose sight of the amount of food you should be consuming. You tend to go for overconsumption - hedonic consumption - as therapy.
"Be it ice cream or a luxury handbag, there are always emotions attached," Garg said.
The study revealed that when people are made aware of emotion effects, they tend to go away.
"One of the mechanisms to curbing hedonic consumption is making people aware of the behaviour by providing nutritional information," Garg noted.
Interestingly, happy emotions curbed the urge to consume unhealthy foods.
"Happiness is shown to increase the consumption of products people believe to be healthy," said the professor.
In her research, she offered both sweet chocolates and sweet dried fruit sultanas to happy and sad people.
The findings revealed that happy people don't did not eat chocolates but they do eat sultanas a lot more.
"We tend to focus on sadness and what it does to consumption but there's also this unexpected good effect of happiness," Garg suggested.
Many studies have pointed that "hedonic consumption" is actually a very unhealthy habit to inculcate. It could lead to a vicious cycle of eating unhealthily.
"Emotional consumption is usually food because it's easily accessible and available to most people," said Garg who received a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad.
"People go for what seems easiest to them in terms of familiarity and in terms of accessibility for 'hedonic consumption'," the professor added
(With inputs IANS)
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