Affective eating: Pleasure at the table is part of health, too

For much of the history of healthy eating, pleasure seems to have been cast as the “villain.” Calories, nutrients, portions and restrictions took center stage, while flavor, memories and the experience of sitting down at the table were often treated as secondary, or even as threats to the discipline required to reach “perfect” health.

But eating is far from a purely biological operation. “Affective eating refers to the emotional, cultural and relational contexts of food. The fact is that eating is never just a biological act of nourishment; it’s a pleasure that feeds our emotions,” explains nutritionist Vanessa de Santis, who works in women’s health, gut and liver health, sports nutrition and quality of life.

Food tells stories, too

A family recipe carries memories of childhood; a dish prepared by a loved one represents care; a shared meal marks a celebration or simply transforms an ordinary day. These meanings are part of what science has come to call “eating pleasure.”

A scoping review published in 2020 by Alexandra Bédard in the journal PLOS ONE analyzed 119 papers and identified 22 dimensions related to this experience. Among the most frequent were sensory aspects, social experiences, food preparation, variety, attention to the act of eating, the place where the meal is eaten and memories associated with food. In most of the studies that examined eating behavior, the review also found favorable associations between pleasure and food choices, although results directly related to health were less consistent.

This helps broaden our understanding of what it means to eat well. Pleasure doesn’t have to be limited to foods considered “special,” nor does it mean always eating whatever offers the greatest immediate reward. It can be found in the aroma of a home-cooked meal, the texture of a food, the discovery of a new flavor, the time devoted to cooking or the company at lunch. In this review, strategies that drew on cooking, shared meals, mindfulness and positive memories related to healthy foods emerged as promising ways to encourage healthier eating behaviors.

Pleasure is not the same as losing control

This is precisely where affective eating and emotional eating need to be distinguished. In the former, the emotional connection relates to memory, culture, relationships and the pleasure of eating. In the latter, food functions mainly as a strategy for coping with difficult emotions.

“The defining feature isn’t ‘enjoying eating with emotional meaning,’ but rather turning to eating as the main (or only) resource available to relieve emotional discomfort,” the nutritionist explains. According to her, paying attention to the trigger and to the level of awareness during the meal can help make that distinction: affective eating is tied to a memory or a relationship, while emotional eating is associated with anxiety, sadness, boredom, anger or loneliness, and can happen automatically. “You know when we say, ‘I need chocolate, today was a really stressful day’? That’s an emotional eating situation,” she says.

The distinction also helps challenge the idea that healthy eating has to be defined by constant control. For Vanessa, the association between pleasure and a lack of discipline was reinforced by a food culture that moralizes choices and labels foods as “good” or “bad.” “It’s absolutely possible to combine pleasure and balance, especially since restriction leads to stress and bingeing. That’s why I recommend eating that is both pleasurable and balanced. Enjoying food is what makes a prescribed eating plan sustainable,” she says.

Eating with presence changes the experience

Attention is an important part of this relationship. Eating in front of screens, in a rush or without noticing what’s on the plate can turn a meal into an automatic activity, making it harder to perceive hunger, fullness and satisfaction. Mindful eating aims precisely to bring awareness to the eating experience, observing sensations, thoughts and emotions without judgment.

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2026 by Khaleda Ahmadyar in Clinical Psychology Review pooled 41 articles on mindfulness and mindful eating interventions. The analysis found a reduction in food intake but did not identify a statistically significant effect on appetite.

The evidence, therefore, does not support the conclusion that eating mindfully simply “speeds up metabolism” or makes hunger disappear. The relationship is more complex. Another systematic review and meta-analysis, published in 2024 by Paola Iaccarino Idelson, Lanfranco D’Elia and Pasquale Strazzullo, evaluated 14 randomized controlled trials on mindful eating and cardiometabolic risk factors. The results showed that the approach was comparable to other established interventions for the clinical outcomes analyzed and pointed to benefits in some parameters, but also revealed heterogeneous results for weight, BMI, waist circumference, blood glucose, glycated hemoglobin and C-reactive protein. The study also found improvements across different trials in aspects such as eating behavior, using food for psychological compensation, binge-eating symptoms, stress and anxiety.

What emerges from this body of evidence is less a metabolic promise and more a shift in perspective: the way a person relates to food can influence behaviors that, in turn, affect health. “We can consider that there is consistent evidence of improvement in behaviors, in the sense of less emotional/external eating and more self-regulation, but direct effects on metabolism and weight are still heterogeneous and methodologically limited, requiring more controlled studies,” Vanessa says.

In other words, paying attention to what you eat, recognizing your body’s signals and reducing automatic eating can be components of a healthier relationship with food, but they don’t replace the other factors that determine metabolic health.

There’s room for emotion in everyday life

Bringing affective eating into daily life doesn’t require turning every meal into an elaborate ritual. For the nutritionist, the key is precisely flexibility. Eating with fewer distractions, allowing yourself to choose pleasurable foods without guilt, alternating convenience with preparing meaningful dishes, sharing meals when possible and leaving room to recognize hunger and fullness are habits that can make the experience more mindful. “The key is flexibility: each habit is an invitation, not an obligation. If it becomes a rule, it loses its affective essence, which is precisely about loosening control,” the specialist notes.

This flexibility also means recognizing that pleasure and nutrition can coexist. A balanced diet doesn’t have to exclude foods chosen for their flavor, memories or cultural meaning. At the same time, that doesn’t mean automatically giving in to every craving triggered by an emotion.

“To restore balance, it’s important to reintroduce foods considered ‘forbidden,’ without guilt, and to reconnect with real hunger and fullness cues rather than external rules,” Vanessa explains. She also emphasizes the importance of developing other ways to cope with difficult emotions, such as talking to someone, resting, moving your body or doing something enjoyable, so that food doesn’t become the only resource available.

It’s not meant to be a “new eating rule”: affective eating invites reflection that goes beyond what’s on the plate, extending to how, why and with whom we eat. Memories, relationships, sensory pleasure and attention can be part of a diet that also takes nutrients and metabolic health into account. Recognizing this human dimension of food is precisely a way to break out of “all-or-nothing” thinking and build, over time, a sustainable relationship with food.

Scientific studies cited or used for supplementary information:

- “Can eating pleasure be a lever for healthy eating? A systematic scoping review of eating pleasure and its links with dietary behaviors and health” – Available at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0244292

- “Effects of mindfulness and mindful eating on food intake and appetite: a systematic review and meta-analysis” – Available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42341365/

- “Mindful Eating Approaches to Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Intervention Studies” – Available at https://www.mdpi.com/2674-0311/3/3/22