Emotional responses to images of food in adults with an eating disorder: A comparative study with healthy and clinical controls

• Negative emotive responses to foods appear an inherent feature of eating disorders.
• In eating disorders anxiety and depression are not related to the fear towards food.
• Therapy in eating disorders should address emotional distress towards foods.

Emotive responses to foods in people with eating disorders are incompletely understood in relation to whether the extent of emotional response is due to the eating disorder or non-specific emotional states.The aims of the present study were to investigate negative and positive emotive responses to food images in adults with an eating disorder, and to compare responses to a (i) healthy and a (ii) clinic (psychiatry) control group. Participants viewed 20 images (16 of foods previously found to evoke fear, disgust and happiness and 4 neutral images) at half-minute intervals and rated emotive responses on 3 visual analogue scales for each image. Participants with an eating disorder (n = 26) were found to have significantly increased negative emotive (disgust and fear) responses and reduced positive (happiness) responses to the images compared to the 20 clinic and 61 healthy participants. Differences between groups remained significant when controlling for baseline levels of fear, disgust and happiness. Thus, the emotive responses to foods did not appear due to non-specific increases in anxiety or depression but rather was due to the presence of an eating disorder.