Questionnaire responses from a convenience sample were used to test for hypothesized relationships between changes over time in individuals' reported frequency of emotional eating and estimates of their success in attempts to reduce body weight over periods of at least 1 year. Respondents were 187 English adults, whose distribution of estimated Body Mass Indices (BMI) approximately that of the general population. Initial BMI was significantly (p less than 0.001) positively associated with reported frequency of emotional eating. Moreover, respondents indicating initially relatively high levels of emotional eating who reported a reduction in that level were found to lose significantly (p less than 0.01) more reported weight and to be significantly (p less than 0.05) more successful at approaching target weight over the period of the study than respondents who continued to report high levels of emotional eating. Similarly, respondents who reported an increase from initially relatively low levels of emotional eating, while not losing significantly less reported weight, were significantly (p less than 0.05) less successful at approaching target weight than those respondents who continued to report low levels of emotional eating.

Adult↗

PubMed1990

How not to think about immediate dietary and postingestional influences on appetites and satieties.

Palatabilities and also satieties are assumption-loaded abstractions from the observable momentary causal relationships between eating or drinking and the situations in which it occurs. Palatability is neither in the food nor in the ingestive movements. Relative preference can vary with context, contrary to the usual concept of stable palatability. Satieties exemplify this, for they can be food-specific, i.e. ingestion-induced suppression of appetite may alter the supposed palatability hierarchy.

Appetite↗

PubMed1990

Sensory influences on food intake.

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Choice Behavior↗

PubMed1990

Effects of dl-fenfluramine on dextrin and casein intakes influenced by textural preferences.

The effects of dl-fenfluramine (2.5 mg/kg) on selection between the textures of nutrient preparations were tested by presenting rats with a choice between pairs of three sizes of chow crumb with 45% dextrin, casein, maltodextrin, or calcium caseinate added or with no nutrient added. The usual effect of fenfluramine was to reduce the intake preference for a coarser over a finer crumb. This drug effect differed, however, with the preparation of protein or of carbohydrate added to each crumb size. There was no consistent effect of nutrient, and hence the reported effects of this dose of dl-fenfluramine cannot be attributed to nutrient-specific selection.

Animals↗

PubMed1990

dl-fenfluramine challenge to nutrient-specific textural preference conditioned by concurrent presentation of two diets.

Effects of the ingestion of protein and carbohydrate conditioned a preference for one size of chow particle over another, which was triggered by need for a specific nutrient. This learned elicitation of nutrient-specific dietary selection was not changed by injection of dl-fenfluramine HCl (2.5 mg/kg). This indicates that previously observed effects of fenfluramine on differential intakes of dextrin- and casein-rich diets do not depend on nutrient-specific self-selection.

Animals↗

PubMed1989

Preference conditioning by concurrent diets with delayed proportional reinforcement.

Mildly food-deprived rats were presented at the same time either high- and low-carbohydrate diets or protein-containing and nonnutritive diets differing in flavor in parallel with nutrient composition. After a few days of these concurrent 10-minute presentations, the rats preferred the flavor of the richer or nutritive diet. Such preference conditioning also occurred when there was a 10-minute delay between the presentation of two flavors in nonnutritive diet and intubation of a mixture of nutrients in proportion to the flavor intakes. Thus, rats are able to perceive the difference between the nutritional aftereffects of two distinctive diets presented concurrently and to learn to respond differentially to associated flavors even when there was a delay as long as that used in earlier studies with pyloric closure. Therefore, the reinforcement that has been suggested to arise from gastric chemoreception can be attributed instead to delayed postgastric effects.

Animals↗

PubMed1989

Genuinely olfactory preferences conditioned by protein repletion.

Effects of protein on mild food deprivation in the rat conditioned a relative preference for an intense, insoluble and tasteless odorant. This learned preference for the protein-paired odorant over a non-nutritive-paired odorant was temporarily obliterated by insertion of tubes in the nares to bypass the olfactory mucosa. This demonstrates truly olfactory conditioning, contrary to assertions that gustatory conditioning had not been excluded.

Animals↗

PubMed1989

Measurement of food perception, food preference, and nutrient selection.

Perception, preference, and selection are all objectively measurable performances that discriminate between different levels of entities such as the sugar, thickener, or protein in a food. A rating or an intake may not be controlled by the word that the experimenter or the subject uses to describe it: "protein"-oriented food selection, "thickness" preference, or "sweetness" perception is proved only when the named objective influence, isolated from any other influence, accounts for the observed variations in choice response. Difference-measuring designs can be extended from merely two levels of an influence to a continuum over the natural range of levels, thus evoking linear psychophysical (dose-response) performance from which the strength of that influence can be estimated. Usually, at least a few influences are operative at once on a choice. Because the interactions may vary among people, the only valid causal analysis is at the individual level. Examples are given of food taste tolerance in the elderly, integration of sensory and attitudinal influences, and dietary choices misattributed to carbohydrate craving.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

Mood- and nutrient-conditioned appetites. Cultural and physiological bases for eating disorders.

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Affect↗

PubMed1988

Fenfluramine and amphetamine suppress dietary intake without affecting learned preferences for protein or carbohydrate cues.

The effects of pharmacological modulation of monoamine transmitter activity on genuine nutrient selection were assessed: that is, drug-induced changes in nutrient-specific dietary choice behaviour were measured, using rats that had learned to select an odour cueing protein content or carbohydrate content of the diet. Anorexigenic doses of DL-fenfluramine-HCl (1.25 or 2.5 mg/kg) and D-amphetamine2 SO4 (0.5 or 1.0 mg/kg) did not affect the selection of protein-paired or carbohydrate-paired odours by trained rats. This weighs against the claim that 5-hydroxytryptamine or catecholamine transmitters are involved in the selection of macronutrients, as distinct from selection between diets in response to sensory differences functionally unrelated to nutrient composition.

Animals↗

PubMed1988

Effects of dl-fenfluramine and xylamidine on gastric emptying of maintenance diet in freely feeding rats.

Freely feeding rats received an anorexigenic dose of dl-fenfluramine HCl (5 mg/kg). Two hours following injection, their stomachs retained significantly greater dry weight contents than saline-injected controls. The same dose of fenfluramine decreased the rate of gastric emptying over a 2 h period to a similar extent in mildly food-deprived rats. The peripherally acting serotonin antagonist xylamidine counteracted the effect of fenfluramine in prolonging the satiating effect of an ad libitum meal of a given size. We propose therefore that the principal mechanism by which fenfluramine reduces food consumption in freely feeding rats is through a prolongation of the satiating effect of absorption as a result of slowing of gastric emptying, presumably via enhanced release of serotonin from nerve terminals in the wall of the gastrointestinal tract.

Amidines↗