Assimilation of healthy and indulgent impressions from labelling influences fullness but not intake or sensory experience

Background: Recent evidence suggests that products believed to be healthy may be over-consumed relative to believed indulgent or highly caloric products. The extent to which these effects relate to expectations from labelling, oral experience or assimilation of expectations is unclear. Over two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that healthy and indulgent information could be assimilated by oral experience of beverages and influence sensory evaluation, expected satiety, satiation and subsequent appetite. Additionally, we explored how expectation-experience congruency influenced these factors. Results: Results supported some assimilation of healthiness and indulgent ratings—study 1 showed that indulgent ratings enhanced by the indulgent label persisted post-tasting, and this resulted in increased fullness ratings. In study 2, congruency of healthy labels and oral experience promoted enhanced healthiness ratings. These healthiness and indulgent beliefs did not influence sensory analysis or intake—these were dictated by the products themselves. Healthy labels, but not experience, were associated with decreased expected satiety. Conclusions: Overall labels generated expectations, and some assimilation where there were congruencies between expectation and experience, but oral experience tended to override initial expectations to determine ultimate sensory evaluations and intake. Familiarity with the sensory properties of the test beverages may have resulted in the use of prior knowledge, rather than the label information, to guide evaluations and behaviour

Eating contexts determine the efficacy of nutrient warning labels to promote healthy food choices

IntroductionUnhealthy food choices increase the risk of obesity and its co-morbidities. Nutrition labels are a public health policy that aims to drive individuals toward healthier food choices. Chile has been an example of this policy, where mandatory nutrient warning labels (NWL) identify processed foods high in calories and critical nutrients. Eating contexts influence individual food choices, but whether eating contexts also influence how NWL alter the decision process and selection during food choice is unknown.MethodsIn an online mouse-tracking study, participants prompted to health, typical, or unrestricted eating contexts were instructed to choose between pairs of foods in the presence or absence of NWL. Conflict during choices was analyzed using mouse paths and reaction times.ResultsNWL increased conflict during unhealthy food choices and reduced conflict during healthy choices in all contexts. However, the probability that NWL reversed an unhealthy choice was 80% in a healthy, 37% in a typical, and 19% in an unrestricted context. A drift-diffusion model analysis showed the effects of NWL on choice were associated with an increased bias toward healthier foods in the healthy and typical but not in the unrestricted context.DiscussionThese data suggest that the efficacy of NWL to drive healthy food choices increases in a healthy eating context, whereas NWL are less effective in typical or unrestricted eating contexts

A Study Of The Effectiveness Of Front-Of-Package Nutrition Labels In The US

American weight trends have steadily increased over the past years. In efforts to better inform consumers of their food consumption, increasingly front-of-package (fop) food labels are displayed on packaged food items. Fop nutrition labels have become more prevalent in the US to help consumers identify healthier options at the point-of-purchase. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of two current fop labels, the facts up front and the facts up front extended labels. In addition, a generic binary label was created to represent a non-brand associated symbol, which does not currently exist in the US. Participants were randomized to one of three of the label conditions or the no-label control group. A total of 161 adults, who are primary grocery shoppers in the US, ages 18-69 participated in this study. All participants were recruited through an online database, qualtrics, in January 2016, and participated in the study. The main outcome measures were the healthiness assessment of two product variants for three comfood categories, along with label liking, familiarity, ease of comprehension, purchase intention, and perceived label credibility. Additionally, participants\u27 nutrition attitude, self-reported nutrition knowledge, and label behaviors were examined. The results indicated minor differences between the facts up front and facts up front extended fops, but both were significantly more liked, familiar, easier to comprehend, and perceived as more credible than the generic binary label, the health check (p \u3c .05). Overall, those in the facts up front label conditions performed better than those in the health check and no label conditions, indicating the presence of fop labels successfully assists in assessing product healthiness

Body odors (even when masked) make you more emotional: behavioral and neural insights

Morality evolved within specific social contexts that are argued to shape moral choices. In turn, moral choices are hypothesized to be affected by body odors as they powerfully convey socially-relevant information. We thus investigated the neural underpinnings of the possible body odors effect on the participants\u2019 decisions. In an fMRI study we presented to healthy individuals 64 moral dilemmas divided in incongruent (real) and congruent (fake) moral dilemmas, using different types of harm (intentional: instrumental dilemmas, or inadvertent: accidental dilemmas). Participants were required to choose deontological or utilitarian actions under the exposure to a neutral fragrance (masker) or body odors concealed by the same masker (masked body odor). Smelling the masked body odor while processing incongruent (not congruent) dilemmas activates the supramarginal gyrus, consistent with an increase in prosocial attitude. When processing accidental (not instrumental) dilemmas, smelling the masked body odor activates the angular gyrus, an area associated with the processing of people\u2019s presence, supporting the hypothesis that body odors enhance the saliency of the social context in moral scenarios. These results suggest that masked body odors can influence moral choices by increasing the emotional experience during the decision process, and further explain how sensory unconscious biases affect human behavior

Social cognitive and neural mechanisms of food choice under the influence of food-related information

Food is the fuel of life. As such food stimuli are intensively processed by the human brain and the consequences of these processes, resulting in our food choice, have an essential impact on our life. Research suggested that food choice is largely guided by predominantly learned preference, and is likely to be influenced by information regarding the food (e.g., nutritional value) as well as by learned beliefs and associations (e.g., between a given food and its health value). This project aims at understanding at both behavioral and neural levels how these non-physiological factors might influence the food/drink choice and how they can be modified to improve our choice. Chapter 1 includes the literature review on 1) how semantic information influences implicit/explicit associations toward food/drink, 2) the predictive validity implicit/explicit associations on food/drink choice, 3) the behavioral and neural evidence of changing associations, choices, and impulsivity control toward food/drink by implementing a conditioning paradigm (e.g. evaluative conditioning). The motivation and the objectives of my Ph.D. project are also presented here. Chapter 2 contains Study 1 (Experiment 1 and 2). The first aim of the thesis is to understand how the association between a certain food and different concepts may guide our choices. This is addressed in Experiment 1 where I investigated how our choices can be predicted by preference and/or implicit associations between different constructs of interest (e.g., social status) and coffee and/or tea. People\u2019s self-report preference, implicit and explicit associations between different social constructs and tea/coffee were measured. Results based on 22 Italian healthy adults indicate that they possess strong implicit associations between tea and low social status, and this association significantly predicted choice of tea. The second aim of the thesis is to investigate whether the associations between food/drink and certain constructs can be changed through a classical learning paradigm, evaluative conditioning (EC), in which the associations between target drinks/food and food-related information was manipulated. This approach allowed us to investigate a possible strategy of intervention that could improve drink/food choices. This is addressed in Experiment 2 whereby a within-subject design is employed with participants going through both EC-condition and control condition. Results based on 68 healthy adults show that the implicit associations between tea and high-social-status, as well as the preference towards tea, significantly increase after EC. Most importantly, the difference in implicit associations across conditions significantly predict the difference in choices of tea between conditions, indicating that changes in implicit associations determine changes in choice. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the third aim which is to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the changes in association after EC between foods and the concepts of healthiness and sustainability. To this end changes in neural markers were related to changes in food choice as well as personal eating habits and individual difference in restraint eating and impulsive behavior. In Study 2, I experimentally strengthened the association between the concept of unhealthiness/unsustainability and heavily-processed food, and between healthiness/sustainability and minimally-processed food. A semantic congruency task combined with the Electroencephalography (EEG) technique was used to investigate changes in neural activity of the N400 in incongruent trials. Results on 18 healthy adults derived by comparing neural signatures of incongruent trials between conditions demonstrated that the magnitude of the N400 in left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for minimally-processed high-calorie food significantly increased after EC. Thus, EC can be considered as an effective method to strengthen the semantic association between foods and a given concept, indexed by the change of neural signature tracking the semantic conflict. This increased magnitude also positively correlated with the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale score, indicating that the more impulsive a person is, the greater the change in magnitude of the N400. Chapter 4 is devoted to address the fourth aim of the thesis that is to understand whether control of impulsivity over unhealthy food choice can be improved through the evaluative priming (EP) that is a variation of EC used in Study 2. Thus in Study 3, 15 healthy adults went through a pre-EP and a post-EP test including a Go/NoGo task combined with EEG. During EP, an increased subjective liking was found for Minimally-Processed Low-Calorie food images in evaluative block. For GNG tasks, at neural level, the averaged amplitude at left DLPFC for food images with evaluative priming was more negative in post-EP than in pre-EP GNG task. More negative N200 amplitudes were consistently found at left DLPFC in post-EP GNG task for Heavily-Processed Low-Calorie food as well as for Minimally-Processed Low-Calorie food. The behavioral and neural evidence showed the improvement of self-control towards food stimuli through evaluative priming. The possible role of left dorsal lateral prefrontal region in online value modulation and in integrating the stimulus feature with related information was identified, suggesting the self-control process based on deliberated thinking with symbolic representations and information operations. In Chapter 5 I summarized and discussed the main findings of my thesis. In short, my project provides the basic roadmap for understanding how food/drink related information affects cognitive and neural underpinnings of food/drink choices. Indeed, choices can be improved through modifying associations between food/drink and related information and thus healthy diets are encouraged. These results provide a potentially interesting research avenue well as possible interventions to modify and improve food/drink choices that could possibly be applied to individuals with eating disorders

Free will in addictive behaviors:A matter of definition

Certain people are at risk for using alcohol or other drugs excessively and for developing problems with their use. Their susceptibility might arise from a variety of factors, including their genetic make-up, brain chemistry, family background, personality and other psychological variables, and environmental and sociocultural variables. Moreover, after substance use has become established, there are additional cognitive-motivational variables (e.g., substance-related attentional bias) that contribute to enacting behaviors consistent with the person's motivation to acquire and use the substance. People who are at such risk are likely to choose to use addictive substances even though doing so entails negative consequences. In the sense of complete freedom from being determined by causal factors, we believe that there is no such thing as free will, but defined as ability to make choices from among multiple options, even though the choices are ultimately governed by natural processes, addicted individuals are free to choose. Although they might appear unable to exercise this kind of free will in decisions about their substance use, addictive behaviors are ultimately always goal-directed and voluntary. Such goal pursuits manifest considerable flexibility. Even some severely addicted individuals can cease their use when the value of continuing the use abruptly declines or when the subjective cost of continuing the use is too great with respect to the incentives in other areas of their lives. Formal treatment strategies (e.g., contingency management, Systematic Motivational Counseling, cognitive training) can also be used to facilitate this reversal

Free Will in Addictive Behaviors: A Matter of Definition

Certain people are at risk for using alcohol or other drugs excessively and for developing problemswith their use. Their susceptibilitymight arise froma variety of factors, including their genetic make-up, brain chemistry, family background, personality and other psychological variables, and environmental and sociocultural variables.Moreover, after substance use has become established, there are additional cognitive-motivational variables (e.g., substance- related attentional bias) that contribute to enacting behaviors consistent with the person\u27s motivation to acquire and use the substance. People who are at such risk are likely to choose to use addictive substances even though doing so entails negative consequences. In the sense of complete freedom from being determined by causal factors, we believe that there is no such thing as free will, but defined as ability to make choices from amongmultiple options, even though the choices are ultimately governed by natural processes, addicted individuals are free to choose. Although they might appear unable to exercise this kind of free will in decisions about their substance use, addictive behaviors are ultimately always goal-directed and voluntary. Such goal pursuits manifest considerable flexibility. Even some severely addicted individuals can cease their use when the value of continuing the use abruptly declines or when the subjective cost of continuing the use is too greatwith respect to the incentives in other areas of their lives. Formal treatment strategies (e.g., contingency management, Systematic Motivational Counseling, cognitive training) can also be used to facilitate this reversal

Cognitive processing of food rewards

AbstractCues associated with tasty foods, such as their smell or taste, are strong motivators of eating, but the power of food cues on behaviour varies from moment to moment and from person to person. Variation in the rewarding value of a food with metabolic state explains why food cues are more attractive when hungry. However, cognitive processes are also important determinants of our responses to food cues. An urge to consume a tempting food may be resisted if, for example, a person has a longer term goal of weight loss. There is also evidence that responses to food cues can be facilitated or inhibited by memory processes. The aim of this review is to add to the literature on cognitive control of eating by reviewing recent evidence on the influence of working memory and episodic memory processes on responses to food cues. It is argued that processing of food information in working memory affects how much attention is paid to food cues in the environment and promotes the motivation to seek out food in the absence of direct contact with food cues. It is further argued that memories of specific recent eating episodes play an important role in directing food choices and influencing when and how much we eat. However, these memory processes are prone to disruption. When this happens, eating behaviour may become more cue-driven and less flexible. In the modern food environment, disruption of cognitive processing of food reward cues may lead to overconsumption and obesity

TEMPTED BY THE EYES: BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN RESPONSES TO FOOD SHAPED BY APPRECIATION, PREFERENCES AND FOOD-EXTRINSIC INFORMATION

Obesity has become a major public health issue as it has reached pandemic proportions over the last decades. This increasing prevalence of obesity and overweight in industrialized countries is to a large part explained by the abundance of tempting foods promoting overeating and subsequent weight gain. Resisting food temptations has thus become a necessity in order to maintain a healthy body weight. The thesis at hand provides a better understanding of behavioral and brain responses involved in sensory food perception, reward and control. The first study (study A) assessed how food liking influences subsequent choice between two food alternatives, and how, in turn, these factors modulate brain responses to the viewing of high- and low- energy foods (published manuscript: “Does my brain want what my eyes like? – How food liking influences choice and impacts spatio-temporal brain dynamics to food viewing" (Bielser & Crézé et al., 2015)). In this study, we found that strongly like foods were chosen more often and faster than less liked foods. Further, the level of liking and subsequent choice influenced brain responses in areas involved in reward attribution as well as decision-making processes, likely influencing prospective food intake. The second study (study B) investigated the neural representation of meal images varying in portion size in the context of prospective food intake and expected satiety (published manuscript: “Brain dynamics of meal selection in humans" (Toepel, Bielser et al., 2015)). In this study, our results showed that brain regions involved in visual processing and reward attribution trace physical portion size increases during early stages of perception, likely reflective of the quantification of the amount of food available for subsequent intake. During a later stage of information processing, brain regions involved in attention and adaptive behaviors responded to "ideal” portion sizes, likely reflecting control over food intake to select portions to achieve adequate satiety. The third study (study C) assessed how encountering traffic light labeling (as used on food packages) preceding food images influenced behavioral and brain responses to high- and low-energy foods (“Biasing behavioral decisions and brain responses to food with traffic light labeling" (Bielser et al., in preparation)). In this study, we found that traffic light labeling and energetic content of viewed foods modulated neural activity in a network of regions known to be involved in reward valuation, inhibitory control, attention and object categorization. These findings support traffic light labeling as a potentially effective means to guide food choices and ameliorate body weight long-term management. Together, the studies comprised in this thesis showed that modulations of neural activity in response to food perception occur already at early stages of visual processing and can be influenced by the level of appreciation, the amount of food presented as well as food-extrinsic information. These findings contribute to a better understanding of factors shaping food-related behavior and, in extension, food intake. -- L’obésité est devenue un problème majeur de santé publique qui a atteint des proportions pandémiques au cours des dernières décennies. L’augmentation de la prévalence du surpoids et de l’obésité dans les pays industrialisés s’explique en grande partie par l’abondance de nourriture dont le degré d’attirance incite à une consommation en excès et engendre une prise de poids. Cette thèse avait pour but une meilleure compréhension des réponses comportementales et cérébrales impliquées dans la perception sensorielle de nourriture, la récompense et le contrôle. La première étude (étude A) a investigué la façon dont l’appréciation de la nourriture influence un choix subséquent entre deux alternatives alimentaires, et comment, par extension, ces facteurs modulent les réponses cérébrales à la vue de nourriture à haute et basse teneur énergétique (manuscrit publié : “Does my brain want what my eyes like? – How food liking influences choice and impacts spatio- temporal brain dynamics to food viewing" (Bielser & Crézé et al., 2015)). Dans cette étude, nous avons montré que la nourriture hautement appréciée est choisie plus souvent que les aliments moins bien notés. De plus, le niveau d’appréciation et le choix subséquent influencent les réponses cérébrales d’aires impliquées dans l’attribution de récompense ainsi que dans les processus de prise de décision et par la même, un impact probable sur la prise alimentaire prospective. La deuxième étude (étude B) a investigué les représentations cérébrales d’images de repas dont la taille des portions varient, dans le contexte d’une prise alimentaire prospective et de la satiété en résultant (manuscrit publié : “Brain dynamics of meal selection in humans" (Toepel, Bielser et al., 2015)). Dans cette étude, nos résultats ont montré que des régions cérébrales impliquées dans les processus visuels, ainsi que dans l’attribution de récompense tracent les augmentations physiques de portion durant les premières étapes de perception, représentant probablement une quantification de la nourriture disponible pour une prise alimentaire subséquente. Durant une étape plus tardive du décodage d’information, des régions cérébrales impliquées dans l’attention et dans les comportements adaptatifs présentent une forte réactivité pour les portions jugées de taille « idéale », reflétant sans doute un contrôle sur la prise alimentaire afin de sélectionner une portion permettant d’atteindre une satiété adéquate. La troisième étude (étude C) a investigué comment la rencontre fortuite de feux de circulation, comme ceux utilisés actuellement sur les labels d’étiquetage alimentaire, influence les réponses comportementales et cérébrales à la vue de nourriture à haute et basse teneur énergétique ("Biasing behavioral decisions and brain responses to food with traffic light labeling" (Bielser et al., en préparation)). Dans cette étude, nous avons montré que ces labels modulent les réponses cérébrales dans un réseau d’aires impliquées dans l’attribution de récompense, le contrôle inhibiteur, l’attention et la catégorisation d’objets. Ces résultats démontrent l’efficacité des labels reproduisant les feux de circulation comme moyen de guidage des choix alimentaires et d’amélioration de la gestion du poids à long terme. Ensemble, les études comprises dans cette thèse ont démontré que les modulations de l’activité cérébrale en réponse à la perception de nourriture ont lieu à des étapes très précoces du décodage d’information visuelle et qu’elles peuvent être influencées par le niveau d’appréciation, la quantité de nourriture disponible ainsi que par des informations contextuelles