Associations between trait food craving and adolescents’ preferences for and consumption of healthy versus unhealthy foods

Adolescents experiencing stress sometimes exhibit an increase in unhealthy eating behaviors; however, it is unclear whether and how adolescents' food cravings play a role in adolescents’ behavioral reactivity to stress. The present study evaluated whether trait food craving predicted preferences for and actual consumption of unhealthy (i.e., high fat and/or high sugar) versus healthy foods following the Trier Social Stress Test in a sample of 96 adolescents. Further, we evaluated whether emotion regulation moderated these associations, such that those who endorsed more frequent use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies exhibited a higher preference for and consumption of unhealthy foods. Results indicated that higher levels of trait food craving predicted higher levels of unhealthy food consumption after the laboratory stressor. However, trait food craving did not predict preferences for healthy or unhealthy food, nor consumption of healthy food, following the stressor. Additionally, emotion regulation did not moderate any of these associations. These findings suggest that trait food tendencies may play a role in adolescents’ food-related behavior in response to acute stressors, should they be replicated in other studies using both laboratory-based and naturalistic designs to study adolescent eating behaviors.