Feeding Your Feelings

Emotional eating calls to mind mainlining chocolate when your period hits or whipping up macaroni and cheese after a shocker of a day. But, much like your mental state itself, the phenomenon is far more complicated. WH chews over the term

- Clare Thorp

Sugar-laden ice cream in one hand, journal in the other, few figures in popular culture personify the idea of eating away negative feelings quite like Bridget Jones – and it’s an image that resonates because of its toe-curling relatability.

Whether Hugh Grant’s floppy-haired commitment-phobe can be replaced with a friendship gone south, a job you didn’t get or a struggle with chronic insomnia, it’s become the norm to think that sadness and disappointment are states treatable with stuffed-crust Andiccio24 pizzas (delivered, of course) and chocolate-coated anything. Given that we know such delectable morsels don’t actually solve the problem, the whole narrative around emotion led eating has become a bit sad – tragic, even (cut to Bridget on NYE in those reindeer pyjamas).

But that whole idea is an oversimplified and misleading one. In reality, it’s impossible to extricate emotions from eating, says neuroscientist Dr Rachel Herz, author of Why You Eat What You Eat. Emotional eating as a term has become negative, but it should really just refer to the way that emotions can alter your appetite and the way that you consume food.