Pleasure and the Control of Food Intake: An Embodied Cognition Approach to Consumer Self‐Regulation

Consumers try to avoid temptation when exposed to appetizing foods by diverting their attention away from their senses (e.g., sight, smell, mouthfeel) and bodily states (e.g., state of arousal, salivation) in order to focus on their longer term goals (e.g., eating healthily, achieving an ideal body weight). However, when not including sensations in their decision‐making processes, consumers risk depleting their self‐regulatory resources, potentially leading to unhealthy food choices. Conversely, based on the concept of “embodied self‐regulation,” the suggestion is made that considering bodily states may help consumers regulate their food choices more effectively. A new model is proposed that facilitates understanding observed consumer behavior and the success or failure of self‐control in food intake. It is argued that bodily states and sensory information should be considered when modeling consumer behavior and developing health‐related advocacy and communication campaigns. The model proposed here leads to new perspectives on consumer consumption behavior and health policy research and strategies

Preliminary study on the utilization of Ca2+ and HCO3 − in karst water by different sources of Chlorella vulgaris

This article aims to present a picture of how a university discipline has been created in Lithuania, given the background of changes caused by the Lithuania’s emancipation from the Soviet Union. The theoretical frame of reference is provided by a modified model of Bronfenbrenners developmental ecology. Data collection has primarily been in the form of interviews with university staff from Lithuanian institutions for higher education. In addition to the interviews, literature lists, course schedules and other key documents have been collected and analysed. The analysis focuses on individual’s conceptualisation of three main areas. The study demonstrates how the creation of management and economics as a university discipline in Lithuania has been formed by a combination of political/ideological, economic, institutional and individual factors. One of the study’s main contributions is to highlight the significance of the concept of academic freedom and to focus on the paradox, where constraint under the old system is replaced by another form of constraint. In this case, where the rigidity of the old Soviet doctrine is replaced by a new freedom; but instead of being given greater opportunities to influence and change the subject, the academic staff are forced into a position where, once again they are subjugated to the influences of international sources

Health and Pleasure in Consumers' Dietary Food Choices: Individual Differences in the Brain's Value System

Taking into account how people value the healthiness and tastiness of food at both the behavioral and brain levels may help to better understand and address overweight and obesity-related issues. Here, we investigate whether brain activity in those areas involved in self-control may increase significantly when individuals with a high body-mass index (BMI) focus their attention on the taste rather than on the health benefits related to healthy food choices. Under such conditions, BMI is positively correlated with both the neural responses to healthy food choices in those brain areas associated with gustation (insula), reward value (orbitofrontal cortex), and self-control (inferior frontal gyrus), and with the percent of healthy food choices. By contrast, when attention is directed towards health benefits, BMI is negatively correlated with neural activity in gustatory and reward-related brain areas (insula, inferior frontal operculum). Taken together, these findings suggest that those individuals with a high BMI do not necessarily have reduced capacities for self-control but that they may be facilitated by external cues that direct their attention toward the tastiness of healthy food. Thus, promoting the taste of healthy food in communication campaigns and/or food packaging may lead to more successful self-control and healthy food behaviors for consumers with a higher BMI, an issue which needs to be further researched

Understanding sweet-liking phenotypes and their implications for obesity: narrative review and future directions

Building on a series of recent studies that challenge the universality of sweet liking, here we review the evidence for multiple sweet-liking phenotypes which strongly suggest, humans fall into three hedonic response patterns: extreme sweet likers (ESL), where liking increases with sweetness, moderate sweet likers (MSL), who like moderate but not intense sweetness, and sweet dislikers (SD), who show increasing aversion as sweetness increases. This review contrasts how these phenotypes differ in body size and composition, dietary intake and behavioural measures to test the widely held view that sweet liking may be a key driver of obesity. Apart from increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in ESL, we found no clear evidence that sweet liking was associated with obesity and actually found some evidence that SD, rather than ESL, may have slightly higher body fat. We conclude that ESL may have heightened awareness of internal appetite cues that could protect against overconsumption and increased sensitivity to wider reward. We note many gaps in knowledge and the need for future studies to contrast these phenotypes in terms of genetics, neural processing of reward and broader measures of behaviour. There is also the need for more extensive longitudinal studies to determine the extent to which these phenotypes are modified by exposure to sweet stimuli in the context of the obesogenic environment

"Eating addiction", rather than "food addiction", better captures addictive-like eating behavior

Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved. This review has been compiled by scientists of the NeuroFAST consortium (The Integrated Neurobiology of Food Intake, Addiction and Stress; www.neurofast.eu), a research program that aims to reveal neurobiological and psychological mechanisms underlying habit-forming addictive processes related to the overconsumption of highly palatable food. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 245009.Peer reviewedPublisher PD