‘Hanger’ and beyond: measuring hunger-related mood dysregulation and its links with mental health, functioning and task-based mood induction

BackgroundSome people experience mood changes when hungry. However, the relevance of this phenomenon to clinical conditions, such as depression and eating disorders, is understudied. Therefore, we devised a questionnaire to measure hunger-related mood dysregulation.MethodsWe developed and validated the Mood, Emotions and Appetite List (MEAL) using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in adults and adolescents in the community, and adults with a history of mental health disorder (N = 1,119). We examined the association of MEAL scores with happiness, frustration and boredom during the frustration-inducing mood drift task, in which participants wait for six minutes and rate their mood every 30 seconds.ResultsThe MEAL showed good psychometric properties, capturing three factors for hunger-related ‘irritability’, ‘low mood’ and ‘somatic feelings’ (RMSEA = 0.03 in community adults, 0.05 in community adolescents, 0.08 in adults with mental health disorder history). Quantitative and qualitative responses evidenced that hunger-related mood dysregulation impacts relationships, work and other activities. MEAL scores were associated with irritability, depression, anxiety and menstrual symptoms. In the mood drift task, the irritability subscale (MEAL-i) demonstrated a significant interaction with time, such that individuals with higher MEAL-i scores reported steeper decreases in happiness (B = -0.11; 95% CI: -0.16–-0.06) and steeper increases in boredom (B = 0.06; 95% CI: 0.00–0.12) and frustration (B = 0.12; 95% CI: 0.05–0.19).ConclusionsThe MEAL measures individual differences in hunger-related mood dysregulation, is associated with mental health, self-reported functioning, and predicts faster worsening of mood during experimentally induced frustration.