Food addiction and self-regulation

Commonalities in the biobehavioral determinants of ingestive behavior and psychoactive drug addiction have given rise to the concept of food addiction (FA). This chapter examines the relationship between FA and diverse of self-regulation, often also referred to as impulsivity. Consistent evidence was present for statistically significant, medium-to-large magnitude associations between FA and deficits in emotional regulation, often measured as negative urgency (i.e., proneness to act out during negative affective states). Significant associations were also present for other indices of impulsive personality traits, albeit with less consistency and smaller effect sizes. Beyond personality, small numbers of studies examined self-regulation defined as impulsive discounting of future rewards or behavioral inhibition, with significant associations for the former but not the latter. Collectively, these findings reveal many parallels to the relationships between impulsivity and drug involvement, further supporting the hypothesis that FA is substantively similar to drug addiction.