In which situations do we eat and how often? A diary study on eating situations and eating pattern stability

Previous research has mostly neglected the situations in which food consumption occurs. This is surprising as eating situations have long been recognized as both drivers of and barriers to food consumption and are key to understanding and changing dietary behavior. The term ‘eating situation’ describes the situation while eating, which comprises situational dimensions such as location or hunger. While research on single situational dimensions exists, little is known about eating situations as a whole. The current paper examines the situations in which we eat our meals and how stably we eat in those situations. Over five work-days, 230 participants (M = 42.70 years; 58.70% male, 44.35% working full-time) completed an online diary study. They described their meals (2,461 meals in total) and the situations in which they ate them. Divisive hierarchical cluster analyses for each meal type (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) resulted in unique cluster solutions that characterize the main eating situations. Based on these results, we developed an eating pattern stability index to describe how stably individuals eat their meals in the same situations. Depending on the meal type, eating pattern stability was associated with age, employment status, children in the household, and income. This study leads to a better understanding of the situational aspects of food consumption and lays the groundwork for future research on health- and sustainability-related dietary behaviors. It provides tools to describe meal situations and eating pattern stability that can be applied to other eating behaviors (e.g., snacking) and samples (e.g., other cultural backgrounds). Future research can expand on these results to determine which eating situations relate to meal quantity, quality, and diversity.