Increased emotional eating behaviors in children with autism: Sex differences and links with dietary variety.
Autistic girls top the list for emotional over-eating tied to sweet cravings and low vegetable variety.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hamama et al. (2021) compared kids with autism to same-age peers without autism. They asked parents how often children eat for comfort or refuse food when upset.
The team also counted how many different foods each child eats. They split the autism group by boys and girls to look for sex differences.
What they found
Children with autism showed more emotional over-eating and more emotional under-eating than peers. Girls with autism scored highest on eating for comfort.
Sweet-food cravings were common, and vegetable variety was low. The link between mood and food was strongest in autistic girls.
How this fits with other research
Ellingsen et al. (2014) first showed feeding issues in autism track with repetitive and sensory behaviors, not social deficits. L et al. add sex and mood to that map.
Islamoğlu et al. (2025) later found autistic kids also risk ARFID and tummy bloating. Together the papers paint a full picture: some kids over-eat for comfort, others avoid food from sensory or GI pain.
Wallisch et al. (2026) seem to clash—they report autistic preschoolers prefer fruit and veggies in lab tests. The gap is about method: lab choice differs from real-life stress eating. Both can be true; sweets win when kids feel upset.
Why it matters
Check emotional eating during autism assessments, especially in girls. Note sweet cravings and low vegetable variety. Add mood coping skills to feeding plans—simple breathing or break cards before snacks. Track both comfort eating and food refusal; one child can show both. Share results with dietitians so interventions target mood and sensory needs together.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Although "picky" eating is well documented in autism spectrum disorder, emotional eating has rarely been investigated. This study examined emotional over- and under-eating based on parent ratings of these behaviors in 4- to 17-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 190) as compared to same-age typically developing children (n = 119). Children with autism spectrum disorder were rated as exhibiting both more emotional over-eating and more emotional under-eating behaviors than their typically developing peers. Furthermore, while sex differences in these emotional eating behaviors were not observed in the typically developing children, girls with autism spectrum disorder were rated as experiencing more emotional over-eating behaviors than boys with autism spectrum disorder. Finally, among all children with autism spectrum disorder, emotional over-eating was linked with increased consumption of sweet foods and decreased consumption of vegetables. These findings have implications for better understanding eating habits in children with autism spectrum disorder and suggest that emotional eating behaviors might have both immediate and downstream health impacts.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2021 · doi:10.1177/1362361320942087