Ego depletion, compensatory health beliefs, and healthy food choice in Chinese university students: a two-wave longitudinal study.

Healthy food choice often requires people to balance immediate reward against longer-term health considerations. The present study examined whether ego depletion and compensatory health beliefs (CHB) were associated with healthy food choice in a two-wave sample of Chinese university students. A total of 394 participants completed measures of ego depletion and CHB and a six-trial binary food-choice task at baseline and again 6 months later. Healthy choices were analyzed both at the trial level using a generalized linear mixed-effects model and at the total-score level using a linear mixed-effects model. At the trial level, higher ego depletion and stronger CHB were both associated with a lower likelihood of choosing the healthier option, whereas the ego depletion × CHB interaction was statistically significant but directionally unexpected and treated as exploratory. A robustness analysis based on the total healthy-choice score replicated the negative main effects, whereas the interaction was only marginally significant. In the longitudinal model, baseline healthy choice was the strongest predictor of follow-up behavior, while ego depletion did not independently predict follow-up choice and CHB showed only a trend-level association. Changes in ego depletion covaried with changes in healthy choice, although the observational change-score analysis does not establish causal direction. Overall, the findings point to substantial stability in dietary decision-making and suggest that ego depletion and CHB have modest, primarily concurrent associations with healthy food choice.