ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Eating Behavior
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1531142
Food and mood: How clean eating content on social media influences affect and body satisfaction in women
Provisionally accepted
- University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
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ABSTRACT Body-related content is omnipresent in social media. Its consumption has shown to impact body image and affect. Clean eating content is often related to body-related content but its relation to the aforementioned constructs has not been examined. In an experimental study, 129 female individuals viewed clean eating or "foodie" content (control condition) on Instagram profiles for five minutes. Positive and negative affect, as well as body satisfaction were measured before and afterwards. We also assessed the behavioral choice of a food after profile viewing, and whether pre-existing vulnerabilities (body dissatisfaction, eating disorder or orthorexic symptoms) impact the change in affect and body satisfaction. There was no significant profile x time interaction effect for positive affect, however it decreased over time (p𝜂2 = .21). Negative affect was reduced after foodie content consumption as opposed to the respective other profile (p𝜂2 > .03). An additional interaction effect in body satisfaction did not substantiate in simple main effects. Pre-existing vulnerabilities did not impact reactivity of individuals to CE content. There was no impact of profile on choice of foods. The change in positive affect underlines previously shown potentially detrimental effects of Instagram consumption in general. The findings also give tentative hints towards the potential negative influence of clean eating content consumption on affect and body dissatisfaction. Thus, also a focus on clean eating might need to be incorporated when targeting media literacy in prevention programs.
Keywords: Affect, body satisfaction, clean eating content, foodie content, instagram
Received: 19 Nov 2024; Accepted: 09 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cossu, Riefler and Hartmann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Andrea Sabrina Hartmann, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
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