Behavioural Environmental Theory of Emotional Eating: Time-adapted Metabolic Social Connection as an Immediate Non-Food Reinforcement Strategy

Emotional eating is commonly addressed through nutritional education, dietary modification, and interventions targeting individual self-control. Although these approaches remain important, they pay comparatively little attention to the behavioural environments in which food becomes the most immediately rewarding and accessible behavioural option, particularly among time-constrained workers experiencing chronic stress, cognitive fatigue, and work-related rumination. This paper develops a Behavioural Environmental Theory of Emotional Eating that integrates evidence from behavioural nutrition, reinforcement theory, behavioural neuroscience, occupational health, and health psychology. The proposed framework conceptualises emotional eating as behavioural allocation among competing sources of reinforcement, determined by cue-triggered wanting, the relative reinforcing value of competing rewards, and the behavioural environment. Building on this theory, we introduce Time-adapted Metabolic Social Connection (T-MSC) as one practical strategy for increasing immediately available non-food reinforcement through brief, psychologically safe, reciprocal social interaction that is deliberately separated from eating. Rather than focusing exclusively on reducing food reward or strengthening self-control, the framework shifts the primary intervention target toward redesigning behavioural environments to increase competing reinforcement before eating occurs. The proposed theory provides a conceptual foundation for mechanism-based intervention development, ecological momentary assessment, workplace health promotion, digital health applications, and future behavioural environmental research on obesity prevention.