Do feelings of hunger in everyday life, for example when dieting, also worsen your mood? A research team presents a questionnaire called MEAL that is intended to record individual differences in everyday hunger. The scientists tested the items with six samples from several hundred adults from the normal population, with adolescents and with people who had depression, anxiety or an eating disorder.
The results suggest that the questionnaire actually captures individual differences: for some people, hunger hardly causes mood swings, while for others it causes more severe mood swings. In general, younger participants and women showed greater changes than men and older people. The fluctuations in women are probably associated with hormonal changes, according to the study.
Of the adults, 25 percent reported that hunger had the greatest impact on school or work. Adolescents reported that their hobbies and interests as well as school and work suffered. A task designed to frustrate people showed that the higher the ratings on the MEAL scale, the steeper their good mood fell and the more boredom and frustration increased.
source
Copps, M. et al. (2025). ‘Hanger’ and beyond: measuring hunger-related mood dysregulation and its links with mental health, functioning and task-based mood induction. PsyArXiv. DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/hjfpn_v2
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