Abstract
Food craving (FC) peaks are highly context-dependent and variable. Accurate prediction of FC might help preventing disadvantageous eating behavior. Here, we examine whether data from 2 weeks of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) questionnaires on stress and emotions (active EMA, aEMA) alongside temporal features and smartphone sensor data (passive EMA, pEMA) are able to predict FCs ~2.5 h into the future in N = 46 individuals. A logistic prediction approach with feature dimension reduction via Best Item Scale that is Cross-Validated, Weighted, Informative and Transparent (BISCWIT) was performed. While overall prediction accuracy was acceptable, passive sensing data alone was equally predictive to psychometric data. The frequency of which single predictors were considered for a model was rather balanced, indicating that aEMA and pEMA models were fully idiosyncratic.
Highlights
Actual food intake is highly context dependent, for example, on social circumstances, food availability, and meal planning/dieting, food craving (FC) is an internal state that can vary partially independent from actual food intake or hunger [1]
Food craving (FC) play a key role in enhancing problematic eating behaviors [4], the present study is the first to establish idiographic time-lagged models to test whether their prediction into the future is feasible and acceptably accurate for a just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) application
Time series data of 46 healthy participants motivated for weight loss were drawn from an aEMA pEMA full EMA (fEMA)
Summary
Actual food intake is highly context dependent, for example, on social circumstances, food availability, and meal planning/dieting, food craving (FC) is an internal state that can vary partially independent from actual food intake or hunger [1]. FC is defined as an intense desire or urge to consume specific foods [1, 2] that can lead to a loss of control over overeating given fitting circumstances. The high clinical relevance of FCs comes from their central role in binge eating in eating disorders [3]. FCs are related to overeating in obesity [4] and often underlie diet breaches in weight loss dieting [5, 6]. FC might be a valuable target for intervention and is the central dependent variable in the present report
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