I ate what?! The effect of stress and dispositional eating style on food intake and behavioral awareness

Many studies have found that individual differences such as emotional eating and dietary restraint affect the relationship between stress and eating. However, little research examines whether people are differentially aware of how much they eat during a stressful situation. The current study placed 52 female undergraduate students in either a low-stress (solving easy anagrams) or high-stress (working on unsolvable anagrams) situation while having the opportunity to eat. Participants then guessed how much food they ate. Results showed that emotional eating and stress were related to overestimation of total food consumption, whereas dietary restraint partially mediated the relationship between stress condition and actual food intake.