172 Obesity
such as anxiety, fear, boredom, and depression (e.g., Schachter and Rodin,
1974). This approach was also supported by Bruch (e.g., 1974) in her
psychosomatic theory of eating behavior and eating disorders. She argued
that some people interpret the sensations of emotions as an emptiness
similar to hunger and that food is used as a substitute for other forms of
emotional comfort. The results from these studies produced fairly incon-
sistent support for the externality theory of obesity. However, the area of
emotional eating and the emotionality theory of obesity has resulted in some
interesting studies. For example, van Strien, Herman, and Verheijden (2008)
explored the relationship between dietary restraint, emotional and external
eating, overeating, and BMI to assess which and how people resist the oppor-
tunity to become overweight offered by the obesogenic environment. The
results showed that although overeating was associated with being over-
weight, this association was moderated by both restraint and emotional
eating (but not external eating). They draw two conclusions from their data.
First, they argue that the impact of overeating is limited by dietary restraint.
Second, they argue that emotional eating is a better predictor of body weight
than external eating. Macht (2008) developed a 5-way model to explore
the ways in which emotions and eating may be linked which takes into
account aspects of both the individual and the emotion itself. From this
perspective, he outlines five classes of emotion-induced changes in eating
in which emotions can interfere with eating, eating can be a by-product
of emotions, or eating may regulate emotions (and vice versa). His five classes
are emotional control of food choice, emotional suppression of food intake,
impairment of cognitive controls, eating to regulate emotions, and emo-
tional regulation of emotions. From this model, variation in different people’s
different responses to emotions can be understood which finds parallels
in the links between stress and eating described in chapter 3. These theories
of external and emotional eating have also been applied to dieting behavior
and eating disorders (see chapters 7, 10, and 11).
Do the obese eat more than the nonobese?
Research exploring the amount eaten by the obese has either focused on
the amount consumed per se or on the type of food consumed.
Because it was believed that the obese ate for different reasons than the
nonobese, it was also believed that they ate more. Research therefore
explored the food intake of the obese in the laboratory (Wooley, Wooley,
and Dunham, 1972) and in more naturalistic settings such as restaurants
and at home, and also examined what food they bought. For example, Coates,