Food Guilt as Dietary-Transgression Wrong Attractor: The Moral Foodscape, Restriction-Compensation Loop, and the Return to Attuned Eating

Food guilt — the persistent affective state arising from perceived dietary transgression — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_FG in the landscape of attuned eating. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as attuned eating: flexible, values-congruent food choices made with present-moment awareness and appropriate pleasure, without post-consumption rumination.

W_FG arises when food acquires the status of a moral arena: dietary choices become acts of virtue or transgression, and the person oscillates between restriction (purity performance) and compensation (temporary escape followed by guilt reinstatement). Nine formal propositions characterize the moral foodscape construction, perfectionist food rules as basin-deepening factors, the neurobiological underpinnings of dietary reward and cortisol-mediated guilt loops, orthorexic W_FG as a distinct basin variant, the distinction from healthy food care, and return paths through intuitive eating, cognitive defusion from food rules, and self-compassion practices.