The influence of glucose intake and psychosocial stress on food craving in healthy adults

Stress has been linked to the consumption of palatable food and may contribute to the development of obesity. Interindividual differences in cortisol stress reactivity are discussed as mediating mechanisms, yet findings linking food craving to cortisol reactivity are heterogeneous. Methodological differences in whether participants receive a sugary preload or are invited fasted may contribute to these divergences. Hence, this study set out to systematically investigate the effect of glucose and psychosocial stress on food craving in healthy adults. Overall, 62 healthy, fasted adults (mean age = 23.13; SD = 3.02; 54.84 % female, 45.16 % male) reported current food craving on the Food Craving Questionnaire, received either glucose or water and were later exposed to psychosocial stress or a friendly control condition. After stressor exposure, food craving was assessed a second time. We repeatedly assessed salivary cortisol and blood glucose and used linear mixed models to test whether the experimental manipulations predicted changes in craving and explored associations with sex and stress-eating tendency.Blood glucose increased in those consuming glucose and the stress test increased cortisol significantly. Higher cortisol reactivity, and even stronger, a greater increase in blood glucose led to significant reductions in food craving over time. We found no supportive evidence that glucose and cortisol reactivity interactively affected craving. These findings suggest that short-term metabolic signals may be more influential in shaping immediate food craving than acute stress, and that acute cortisol elevations may not universally promote food craving.