Eating Disorders — Weird Food Concoctions
Food pairing is the process of pairing foods to create a super-additive combination that will result in positive, negative or neutral impact; thus, the combination of food may taste much better than if they were individually consumed. In the culinary field, the concept of food mixtures is creative and intriguing, however, frequent consumption of food concoctions in psychology is perceived to be a symptom of an eating disorder. Food concoctions involve strange/bizarre food mixtures, and carrying out this behavior alone due to embarrassment, is called secretive food concocting that could make symptoms of eating disorders worse. On the other hand, research also showed that not being able to eat new food combinations/flavors, a condition known as neophobia may also result in eating disorders. Therefore, this article will understand the symptoms for eating disorders from both sides.
To understand the weird food combination symptoms, major eating disorders will be looked at. Eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder are major in the field of psychology. Patients suffering from anorexia nervosa view themselves as overweight when in reality they are dangerously malnourished. It is characterized into two kinds: restricting type and the binge-eating/purging type (Zipfel et al., 2015). In the former, due to fear of being overweight, they may restrict their diet to the point of starvation to have an ideal body shape. In the latter the individuals binge-eat and purge food to look fit which result in harm. The restrictive type, dislike making weird food combinations and eating them. In the binge and purge eating disorder, individuals love making weird food combinations and even eating them, but to maintain their ideal body shape they purge the food by putting their finger at the end of mouth to induce self-vomiting. In binge eating disorder (BED), the patients frequently consume large amounts of food and are unable to stop eating, thus resulting in being overweight. Bulimia nervosa is also a serious eating disorder, where people eat large amounts of food and purge to lose calories in a very unhealthy way.
Secretive food concocting is observed in BED and bulimia nervosa, worsening the symptoms. It is behavior in which the individual makes bizarre food combinations and eats them alone due to fear of embarrassment when in the presence of others. A study showed that a patient suffering from bulimia nervosa once used to make strange food combinations of pretzels with butter spray, mayonnaise and salsa (Boggiano et al., 2013). Other patients use to sprinkle sugar and cinnamon powder on taco shells. So, concoctions include sugar, salt, milk, chocolate, cheese, butter or various other ingredients. An experiment was conducted in which the participants (normal students) were divided into two groups: concocting and non-concocting, with the aim of measuring emotional expression while concocting. The major emotions expressed in the experiment were excitement, depression, anger and loneliness during concocting. After eating them, emotions like disgust, guilt and anger were expressed greater in participants.
Now the question arises why do patients seek pleasure in concocting these foods? The reason being the texture of food! When patients mix and match, various flavors are tasted, and these different combinations make them feel excited, just like any pleasure oriented behavior. There is no harm in creating such combinations, as in the field of culinary they are labeled as culinary art, but when consumed and purged frequently, it injures and damages the body.
Different combinations are seen in different cultures, that highlight their importance. In Japanese culture, different layers of sushi result in different textures and flavors, e.g. wasabi on tuna, tuna on white chocolate, thus three layers of sushi, resulting in fish texture with sweet silky white chocolate (Spence et al., 2017). In the west, culinary art fusions examples like cotton candy with carrot and dessert with caviar (Spence et al., 2019). All these combinations do not harm the body but will only cause harm if binge eating occurred.
It has also been seen that eating disorders may also be related to changes in sleeping patterns and could lead to disorders like the nocturnal sleep related eating disorder (NSRED). A study showed that a forty-year-old obese man, was prescribed zolpidem tartrate, showed bizarre eating behaviors during sleep (Dang et al., 2013). It was seen that the man sleep-walked to different places (e.g kitchen or even his own shop) and made weird combinations of food and ate them. When waking up the next morning, the man had no recollection of memories of the past night and could not recall why his pillow was in the kitchen! The mechanism behind this abnormality is related to the zolpidem tartrate. Zolpidem is a medicinal drug which is prescribed for treating insomnia that potentiates GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid) and this further stimulates the frontal lobe of the brain that mainly functions for voluntary actions. The zolpidem, during sleep stimulates the frontal lobe and results in carrying out voluntary actions involuntarily! These bizarre behaviors are seen in women more than men suffering from NSRED; behavior like grilling, chopping, stirring, and even frying was observed in these patients during sleeping. Sometimes the patient would even make weird food combinations like sandwiches with soapy hand cream or dog food or baking soda! (Dang et al., 2013)
However, studies have also shown that not being able to eat different foods or not being able to make different combinations and eating them may also be symptoms of eating disorder, called neophobia (Wright, Halse & Levy, 2016). Patients may dislike unfamiliar foods and may even starve themselves just like in restrictive anorexia. Neophobia is examined in patients using a scale called the Food Neophobia Scale (FN) scale, which consists of various statements of like and dislikes and is rated on a scale of 1 to 5. (Laureati et al., 2015) Principles of classical and operant conditioning are also applied to explain neophobia called as food avoidance theory. When any food is paired with aversive condition (disgust/dislike) it results in avoidance of that food (Hildebrandt et al., 2015).
In conclusion, eating weird food combinations frequently is harmful and thus a symptom of eating disorder. Major disorders and subtypes were explained with relation to weird combinations. It was seen that patients tend to mix and match and eat when they are alone and may purge for fear of being overweight. Studies also investigated understanding emotions expressed during and after concoctions. Secretive food concoction occurred in BED and bulimia nervosa. On the other hand, studies also showed that fear of tasting new flavors may also be a symptom of eating disorder as in anorexia, where classical conditioning principles were applied, and the theory is called food avoidance theory. NSRED, an eating disorder related to unstable sleeping patterns is a bizarre phenomenon in which the patient has no recollection of memories of previous night. Future studies should conduct experiments of food concoctions on clinical patients and measure their emotional expression; studies discussed above are non-longitudinal studies so experiments conducted should be longitudinal, and even meta-analyses should be conducted to resolve uncertainty. Thus, one can involve themselves in trying out weird food combinations but should not purge them out purposely as it may result in harming the body.
References
Boggiano, M. M., Turan, B., Maldonado, C. R., Oswald, K. D., & Shuman, E. S. (2013). Secretive food concocting in binge eating: test of a famine hypothesis. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 46(3), 212–225.
Dang, A., Garg, G., & Rataboli, P. V. (2009). Zolpidem induced nocturnal sleep‐related eating disorder (NSRED) in a male patient. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 42(4), 385–386.
Hildebrandt, T., Grotzinger, A., Reddan, M., Greif, R., Levy, I., Goodman, W., & Schiller, D. (2015). Testing the disgust conditioning theory of food-avoidance in adolescents with recent onset anorexia nervosa. Behaviour research and therapy, 71, 131–138.
Laureati, M., Bergamaschi, V., & Pagliarini, E. (2015). Assessing childhood food neophobia: Validation of a scale in Italian primary school children. Food quality and preference, 40, 8–15.
Spence, C., Wang, Q. J., & Youssef, J. (2017). Pairing flavours and the temporal order of tasting. Flavour, 6(1), 4.
Spence, C., Corujo, A., & Youssef, J. (2019). Cotton candy: A gastrophysical investigation. International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, 16, 100146.
Wright, J., Halse, C., & Levy, G. (2016). Preteen boys, body image, and eating disorders. Men and Masculinities, 19(1), 3–21.
Zipfel, S., Giel, K. E., Bulik, C. M., Hay, P., & Schmidt, U. (2015). Anorexia nervosa: aetiology, assessment, and treatment. The lancet psychiatry, 2(12), 1099–1111.
