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co, Reviewfindings about other hormonal signals that acutely affect feeding, such as ghrelin and other gut peptides activated by fasting or feeding, added to our knowledge about regulators of energy balance [9,10]. However, it has become glaringly obvious that voluntary behaviors, stimulated by external or internal challenges or pleasurable feelings, memories and habits can override the basic homeostatic controls of energy balance [11–17]. The increased amount of perceived stress experienced by individuals in modern society affects feeding behavior [18–20]. In fact, a recent study showed that sadness favored eating of high fat/sweet, hedonically rewarding foods, whereas intake during a happy state favored dried that the difference between the gainers and the losers might be a consequence of higher insulin concentrations in people with higher body mass index. In both people and animals, a shift toward choosing more pleasurable or palatable calories occurs whether or not total caloric intake increases with stress [14,19,22,27– 29]. With choice [30,31], the foods eaten during times of stress typically favor those with increased fat and/or sugar content (Figure 1). Under controlled lab circumstances, acute physical or emotional distress induces increased intake of ‘comfort ’ foods in humans and animals [21,29– 34], even when they are not hungry and have no homeo-static need for calories [31,35]. Stress-induced feeding is also observed in normal weight women who consciously monitor their food intakeCorresponding author: Dallman, M.F