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Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Boredom is an established cause and correlate of eating behavior. Yet, existing work offers a scattered range of plausible motivations for why this is. We examined among 302 people representative of the adult UK population what motivations they had for selecting food during the COVID-19 pandemic and...

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Autores principales: Van Tilburg, Wijnand A. P., Pekrun, Reinhard, Igou, Eric R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9598600/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36285935
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12100366
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author Van Tilburg, Wijnand A. P.
Pekrun, Reinhard
Igou, Eric R.
author_facet Van Tilburg, Wijnand A. P.
Pekrun, Reinhard
Igou, Eric R.
author_sort Van Tilburg, Wijnand A. P.
collection PubMed
description Boredom is an established cause and correlate of eating behavior. Yet, existing work offers a scattered range of plausible motivations for why this is. We examined among 302 people representative of the adult UK population what motivations they had for selecting food during the COVID-19 pandemic and how this related to boredom. As predicted, bored people choose food less for health reasons and more for convenience. Boredom reduced ethical and ‘natural content’ motivations for selecting food and was not associated with choosing food to regulate one’s mood or to experience unfamiliarity. Boredom was also associated with greater absolute changes in weight over the course of the pandemic. Boredom did not predict weight gains or losses overall. These findings offer insights into the role that boredom plays in eating motivations in particular and health-relevant outcomes in general.
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spelling pubmed-95986002022-10-27 Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic Van Tilburg, Wijnand A. P. Pekrun, Reinhard Igou, Eric R. Behav Sci (Basel) Article Boredom is an established cause and correlate of eating behavior. Yet, existing work offers a scattered range of plausible motivations for why this is. We examined among 302 people representative of the adult UK population what motivations they had for selecting food during the COVID-19 pandemic and how this related to boredom. As predicted, bored people choose food less for health reasons and more for convenience. Boredom reduced ethical and ‘natural content’ motivations for selecting food and was not associated with choosing food to regulate one’s mood or to experience unfamiliarity. Boredom was also associated with greater absolute changes in weight over the course of the pandemic. Boredom did not predict weight gains or losses overall. These findings offer insights into the role that boredom plays in eating motivations in particular and health-relevant outcomes in general. MDPI 2022-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9598600/ /pubmed/36285935 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12100366 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Van Tilburg, Wijnand A. P.
Pekrun, Reinhard
Igou, Eric R.
Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_fullStr Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_short Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_sort consumed by boredom: food choice motivation and weight changes during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9598600/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36285935
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12100366
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