According to Nettle et al., obesity could be partially explained by perceived food insecurity. Given the central nature of this notion in their hypothesis, one may wonder: (1) What are the mechanisms underlying the assessment of food (in)security? (2) Is this assessment sensitive to biases? (3) Does this assessment work similarly in individuals with different body mass indexes (BMIs) – that is, in obese individuals?

The assessment of food (in)security (and more generally, any situation or event), called appraisal in affective sciences, refers to the subjective evaluation of an event's significance (e.g., Coppin & Sander Reference Coppin, Sander and Meiselman2016). This appraisal process is based on specific criteria, such as relevance (How important is this event or situation?), predictability (How predictable is it?), implications (What are its consequences?), and coping potential (Can I handle it? How well?) (for more details, see Sander et al. Reference Sander, Grandjean and Scherer2005). This process could explain how different individuals can consider a similar food supply as more or less secure, and how the same individual can consider the same food supply as more or less secure at two different time points. If certain individuals appraise a given food supply as important and highly unpredictable, if they foresee a potential food shortage as obstructive to their needs, and do not feel like they can cope with the situation in a satisfactory manner, one would predict that these individuals have higher chances of becoming or being obese based on Nettle et al.’s work.

Besides being subjective and variable across individuals and time, appraisal is also sensitive to biases: that is, systematic tendencies to assess events or situations in particular ways. For instance, individuals suffering from particular types of depression tend to systematically underestimate their coping potential (e.g., Scherer Reference Scherer1987; see also Joormann & Siemer Reference Joormann and Siemer2011). One can imagine similar potential biases in other groups of individuals. Researchers have consistently found lower socioeconomic status to be associated with biases in the appraisal of ambiguous situations, which are considered to be more threatening than individuals from higher social classes (e.g., Chen & Matthews Reference Chen and Matthews2001). It has also been shown that social identities influence the assessment of food-related smells (Coppin et al. Reference Coppin, Pool, Delplanque, Oud, Margot, Sander and Van Bavel2016) and food items (Hackel et al., Reference Hackel, Coppin, Wohl and Van Bavelsubmitted). Altogether, this suggests that group affiliation could predispose to particular appraisal tendencies, including in the case of food-related items. In the even more specific case of food security, these biases may lead to a less secure assessment of food resources in particular groups. More specifically, appraisal may differ in men and women, and individuals from low- versus high-income countries, which could explain the specificity of the correlation reported by Nettle et al. to women in high-income countries.

Although appraisal often occurs in an automatic fashion (Sander et al. Reference Sander, Grandjean and Scherer2005), it depends on an individual's cognitive functions. In the case of obesity, cognitive deficits related to obesity-associated neuroinflammation (e.g., Miller & Spencer Reference Miller and Spencer2014) are well documented (e.g., Coppin Reference Coppin2016; Fitzpatrick et al. Reference Fitzpatrick, Gilbert and Serpell2013). Thus, obese individuals tend to show deficits in executive functions, such as working memory and decision making (e.g., Coppin et al. Reference Coppin, Nolan-Poupart, Jones-Gotman and Small2014). Moreover, much comorbidity, such as depression, exists (e.g., Carey et al. Reference Carey, Small, Yoong, Boyes, Bisquera and Sanson-Fisher2014). Yet, as mentioned earlier, depression is associated with particular appraisal biases. Consequently, once individuals are obese, their appraisal of food security may also be changed by altered cognitive functions and potentially reinforced by biases.

In light of the evidence above, the following vicious circle could occur: Food would be appraised as less secure by some individuals (e.g., because of biases and/or individual and/or group predispositions), leading to increased food intake and weight, itself causing neuroinflammation and cognitive deficits, potentially creating or reinforcing preexisting cognitive biases, in addition to biases from comorbid conditions, leading to even higher BMI. Systematically investigating the appraisal of food security and its association with BMI (including in longitudinal studies) may deliver fundamental insights into cognitive and affective sciences, as well as in obesity research. Although this approach does not constitute directly applicable therapeutic interventions for clinical application, the expected research results may lay the necessary groundwork of knowledge from which such interventions can be derived. For instance, a finding that low predictability of food supply and low coping potential appraisal are associated with higher BMIs might be used by therapists by trying to modify such potentially dysfunctional appraisals in the current environment to reestablish a healthier BMI.