Absence of a disinhibition effect of alcohol on food consumption

Abstract

Alcohol is frequently mentioned as a disinhibitor of restrained eating behavior although only a small number of studies have investigated this disinhibition effect. The present study was conducted to fill this gap. A total of 116 female college students participated in a questionnaire-based assessment and a taste-test experiment. Before the taste test, half of the participants consumed a preset amount of alcohol-laced orange juice, the other half were given plain orange juice. The dependent variable was the amount of savory crackers eaten during the taste test. The Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ), the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ), and the Restraint Scale (RS) were used to measure eating behavior dimensions, which formed the independent variables in various regression analyses. No disinhibition effect was found. On the contrary, participants scoring high on restraint (DEBQ, TFEQ) proved to consume even less food than those having lower scores. Participants that rated high on the scales measuring tendency toward overeating consumed more food than participants with low scores. These results support earlier contentions that the validity of the Restraint Theory's statement that dieting leads to overeating is questionable.