Time Use and Food Consumption

摘要

Because technology has made it so much easier to consume food in any place and at any time, secondary eating may be a much more relevant phenomenon today than it was in the past. Understanding better how people consume when their mind is not solely focused on food may therefore be an important piece of the puzzles that surround the rise in obesity over the last few decades. In future work, we plan to better understand the drivers of secondary eating. In particular, we have collected rich data on individual-specific levels of overall well-being, self-control, and stress; it will be interesting to see whether secondary eating behaviors are systematically related to these individual characteristics. We also plan to empirically explore the relationship between high-frequency mood changes and both primary and secondary eating over the course of the day. The rich data we have collected on how people feel (both positive and negative affects) as they are engaged in various activities will allow us to track how mood swings relate to eating.