Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T23:29:43.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Eating habits and appetite control: a psychobiological perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2008

Peter J. Rogers
Peter J. Rogers*
Affiliation:
Institute of Food Research, Reading Laboratory, Reading RG6 6BZ, UK
*
Corresponding author:Dr Peter J. Rogers, fax + 44 (0)118 9267917, email [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

An individual's eating behaviour is shaped by factors ranging from economic conditions and cultural practices to biological influences. The physiological system controlling appetite appears to be adapted to solving the problem of an unevenness of food supply across time, and is fairly permissive in its response to undereating and overeating. Consequently, when food is abundant, the diet is energy dense and energy expenditure is low, there is a strong tendency to become obese (i.e. obesity is better viewed as due to a ‘toxic’ environment than to faulty physiological control of appetite). Under such conditions the most common method of avoiding obesity is through the cognitive control of eating. However, dietary restraint and dieting are demanding tasks, and are associated with psychological costs, including significant impairment of cognitive performance. Restraint is also prone to disinhibition, with the result that it can sometimes undermine eating control, even leading to the development of highly disordered eating patterns. In part, these difficulties are due to the self-perpetuating nature of dietary habits: for example, hunger tends to be diminished during strict unbroken dieting, but increased in individuals having a highly variable eating pattern (such as occurs when eating is frequently disinhibited). These features of appetite control provide both barriers and opportunities for changing behaviour. Accordingly, there is a need for future research to focus on the psycho-social factors and the dieting practices predicting successful eating and weight control, with the objective of identifying the actual cognitive and behavioural strategies used by the many dieters and restrained eaters who are able to achieve weight loss and maintain long-term weight stability.

Keywords

AppetiteSatietyObesityDietingCognitive function
Type
Joint Symposium with the British Dietetic Association on ‘Implementing dietary change; theory and practice’ Session 3. Changing eating habits
Information
Proceedings of the Nutrition Society , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 59 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © The Nutrition Society 1999

References

Bernstein, IL (1994) Development of food aversions during illness. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 53, 131–137.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birch, LL & Deysher, M (1985) Conditioned and unconditioned caloric compensation: Evidence for self-regulation of food intake by young children. Learning and Motivation 16, 341–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, LL, McPee, L, Sullivan, S & Johnson, S (1989) Conditioned meal initiation in young children. Appetite 13, 105–113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blair, AJ, Booth, DA, Lewis, VJ & Wainwright, CJ (1989) The relative success of official and informal weight reduction techniques: Retrospective correlational evidence. Psychology and Health 3, 195–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blundell, JE & Rogers, PJ (1991) Hunger, hedonics, and the control of satiation and satiety. In Chemical Senses. vol. 4, Appetite and Nutrition, pp. 127–148 [Friedman, MI, Tordoff, MG and Kare, MR, editors]. New York: Marcel Dekker.Google Scholar
Booth, DA (1977) Satiety and appetite are conditioned reactions. Psychosomatic Medicine 39, 76–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Booth, DA (1978) Acquired behaviour controlling energy intake and output. Psychiatric Clinics of North America 1, 545–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, DA (1994) Psychology of Nutrition. London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Booth, DA & Mather, P (1978) Prototype model of human feeding, growth and obesity. In Hunger Models: Computable Theory of Feeding Control, pp. 279–322 [Booth, DA, editor]. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Booth, DA, Mather, P & Fuller, J (1982) Starch content of ordinary foods associatively conditions human appetite and satiation, indexed by intake and eating pleasantness of starch-paired flavours. Appetite 3, 163–184.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, PJ & Konner, M (1987) An anthropological perspective on obesity. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 499, 29–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brug, J, Hospers, HJ & Kok, G (1996) Differences in psychosocial factors and fat consumption between stages of change for fat reduction. Psychology and Health 12, 719–727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campfield, LR, Smith, FJ, Rosenbaum, M & Hirsch, J (1996) Human eating: Evidence for a physiological basis using a modified paradigm. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 20, 133–137.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlson, NR (1994) Physiology of Behavior, 5th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Clendenen, VI, Herman, CP & Polivy, J (1994) Social facilitation of eating among friends and strangers. Appetite 23, 1–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cowen, PJ, Anderson, IM & Fairburn, CG (1992) Neurochemical effects of dieting: Relevance to changes in eating and affective disorders. In The Biology of Feast and Famine: Relevance to Eating Disorders, pp. 269–284 [Anderson, GH and Kennedy, SH, editors]. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cox, DN, Anderson, AS, Lean, MEJ & Mela, DJ (1998) UK consumer attitudes, beliefs and barriers to increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. Public Health Nutrition 1, 61–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Day, JEL, Rogers, PJ, Finch, GM & Gaffan, EA (1998) The effect of food-related cues on the specificity of appetite in the rat. Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science (In the Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Castro, JM (1981) The stomach energy content governs meal patterning in the rat. Physiology and Behavior 26, 795–798.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Castro, JM (1988) The meal pattern of rats shifts from postprandial regulation to preprandial regulation when only five meals per day are scheduled. Physiology and Behavior 43, 739–746.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Castro, JM (1996) How can eating behaviour be regulated in the complex environments of free-living humans? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 20, 119–131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Forbes, JM (1988) Metabolic aspects of the regulation of voluntary food intake and appetite. Nutrition Research Reviews 1, 145–168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frayn, KN (1996) Metabolic Regulation: A Human Perspective. London: Portland Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, MI (1991) Metabolic control of food intake. In Chemical Senses. vol. 4, Appetite and Nutrition, pp. 19–38 [Friedman, MI, Tordoff, MG and Kare, MR, editors]. New York: Marcel Dekker.Google Scholar
Garcia, J, Hankins, WG & Rusiniak, KW (1974) Behavioural regulation of the milieu interne in man and rat. Science 185, 824–831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garn, SM & Leonard, WR (1989) What did our ancestors eat? Nutrition Reviews 47, 337–345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodwin, GM, Cowen, PJ, Fairburn, CG, Parry-Billings, M, Calder, PC & Newsholme, EA (1990) Plasma concentrations of tryptophan and dieting. British Medical Journal 300, 1499–1500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, MW, Elliman, NA & Rogers, PJ (1995) Lack of effect of short-term fasting on cognitive function. Journal of Psychiatric Research 29, 245–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, MW & Rogers, PJ (1993) Selective attention to food and body shape words in dieters and restrained nondieters. International Journal of Eating Disorders 14, 515–517.3.0.CO;2-E>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, MW & Rogers, PJ (1995) Impaired cognitive functioning in dieters during dieting. Psychological Medicine 25, 1003–1010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, MW, Rogers, PJ & Elliman, NA (1999) Dietary restraint and additive behaviours: The generalisability of Tiffany's (1990) cue reactivity model. International Journal of Eating Disorders (In the Press).Google Scholar
Green, MW, Rogers, PJ, Elliman, NA & Gatenby, SJ (1994) Impairment of cognitive performance associated with dieting and high levels of dietary restraint. Physiology and Behavior 55, 447–452.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heatherton, TF, Herman, CP, Polivy, J, King, JA & McGree, ST (1988) The (mis)measurement of restraint: an analysis of conceptual and psychometric issues. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 97, 19–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Herman, CP (1978) Restrained eating. Psychiatric Clinics of North America 1, 593–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, CP & Mack, D (1975) Restrained and unrestrained eating. Journal of Personality 43, 647–660.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Herman, CP, Polivy, J, Klajner, F & Esses, VM (1981) Salivation in dieters and non-dieters. Appetite 2, 356–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, CP, Polivy, J, Pliner, P, Threlkeld, J & Munic, D (1978) Distractibility in dieters and non-dieters: an alternative view of ‘externality’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 43, 35–48.Google Scholar
Holt, SHA, Brand Miller, JC, Petocz, P & Farmakalidis, E (1995) A satiety index of common foods. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 49, 675–690.Google ScholarPubMed
Jansen, A, Broekmate, J & Heymans, M (1992) Cue-exposure vs. self-control i n the treatment of binge eating: A pilot study. Behavior Research and Therapy 30, 235–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kern, DL, McPhee, L, Fisher, J, Johnson, S & Birch, LL (1993) The postingestive consequences of fat condition preferences for flavours associated with high dietary fat. Physiology and Behavior 54, 71–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kissileff, HR & Van Itallie, TB (1982) Physiology of the control of food intake. Annual Review of Nutrition 2, 371–418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laessle, RG, Bossert, S, Hank, G, Halweg, K & Pirke, KM (1990) Cognitive performance in patients with bulimia nervosa: relationship to intermittent starvation. Biological Psychiatry 27, 549–551.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LeGoff, DB, Leichner, P & Spigelman, MN (1988) Salivary response to olfactory food stimuli in anorexics and bulimics. Appetite 11, 15–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, HM, Paisley, CM & Mela, DJ (1993) Changing to a low fat diet: attitudes and beliefs of UK consumers. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 47, 361–373.Google ScholarPubMed
Louis-Sylvestre, J, Giachetti, I & Le Magnen, J (1984) Sensory versus dietary factors in cafeteria-induced overweight. Physiology and Behavior 32, 901–905.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lowe, MR (1993) The effects of dieting on eating behaviour: A three-factor model. Psychological Bulletin 114, 100–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mela, DJ & Rogers, PJ (1998) Food, Eating and Obesity: The Psychobiological Basis of Appetite and Weight Control. London: Chapman & Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nisbett, RE (1972) Hunger, obesity, and the ventromedial hypothalamus. Psychological Review 79, 433–453.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Dea, K (1992) Obesity and diabetes in the land of milk and honey. Diabetes Metabolism Reviews 8, 373–388.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinel, JPJ (1993) Biopsychology, 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Polivy, J & Herman, CP (1985) Dieting and binging: a causal analysis. American Psychologist 40, 193–201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prentice, AM (1995) Are all calories equal? In Weight Control: The Current Perspective, pp. 9–33 [Cottrell, R, editor]. London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Redd, M & de Castro, JM (1992) Social facilitation of eating: Effects of social instruction on food intake. Physiology and Behavior 52, 749–754.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robbins, TW & Fray, PJ (1980) Stress-induced eating: fact, fiction or misunderstanding? Appetite 1, 103–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodin, J & Slochower, J (1976) Externality in the non-obese: Effects of environmental responsiveness on weight gain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 33, 338–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, PJ (1985) Returning ‘cafeteria-fed’ rats to a chow diet: Negative contrast and effects of obesity on feeding behaviour. Physiology and Behavior 35, 493–499.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rogers, PJ (1990) Why a palatability construct is needed. Appetite 14, 167–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, PJ (1993) The experimental investigation of human eating behaviour In Human Psychopharmacology: Measures and Methods, vol. 4, pp.123–142 [Hindmarch, I and Stonier, PD, editors]. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Rogers, PJ (1994) Mechanisms of moreishness and food craving. In Pleasure: The Politics and the Reality, pp. 38–49 [Warburton, DM, editor]. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Rogers, PJ & Blundell, JE (1984) Meal patterns and food selection during the development of obesity in rats fed a cafeteria diet. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 8, 441–453.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rogers, PJ, Richardson, NJ & Elliman, NA (1995) Overnight caffeine abstinence and negative reinforcement of preference for caffeine-containing drinks. Psychopharmacology 120, 457–462.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rozin, P (1996) Sociocultural influences on human food selection. In Why We Eat What We Eat, pp. 233–263 [Capaldi, ED, editor]. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruderman, AJ (1986) Dietary restraint: A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin 99, 247–262.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schachter, S (1971) Some extraordinary facts about obese humans and rats. American Psychologist 26, 129–144.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sclafani, A (1995) How food preferences are learned: laboratory animal models. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 54, 419–427.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sclafani, A & Nissenbaum, JW (1985) Is gastric sham feeding really sham feeding? American Journal of Physiology 248, R387–90.Google ScholarPubMed
Smith, GP, Gibbs, J & Young, RC (1974) Cholecystokinin and intestinal satiety in the rat. Federation Proceedings 33, 1146–1149.Google ScholarPubMed
Smith, GP, Greenberg, D, Corp, E & Gibbs, J (1990) Afferent information in the control of eating. In Obesity: Towards a Molecular Approach, pp. 97–125 [Bray, GA, editor]. New York: Alan R. Liss Inc.Google Scholar
Stricker, EM (1984) Biological bases of hunger and satiety: Therapeutic implications. Nutrition Reviews 42, 333–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stricker, EM & Verbalis, JG (1987) Biological bases of hunger and satiety. Annals of Behavioural Medicine 9, 3–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stunkard, AJ & Messick, S (1985) The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire to measure dietary restraint, disinhibition and hunger. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 29, 71–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tiffany, ST (1990) A cognitive model of drug urges and drug-use behaviour: The role of automatic and non-automatic processes. Psychological Review 97, 147–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiffany, ST (1995) The role of cognitive factors in reactivity to drug cues In Addictive Behaviour: Cue Exposure Theory and Practice, pp. 137–165 [Drummond, DC, Tiffany, ST, Glautier, S and Remmington, B, editors]. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Toates, F (1986) Motivational Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Van Itallie, TB & Kissileff, HR (1990) Human obesity: A problem in body energy economics. In Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology. vol. 10, Neurobiology of Food and Fluid Intake, pp. 207–240 [Stricker, EM, editor]. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Strein, T, Frijters, JER, Bergers, GPA & Defares, PB (1986) The Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) for assessment of restrained, emotional, and external eating behaviour. International Journal of Eating Disorders 5, 295–315.3.0.CO;2-T>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wardle, J (1986) The assessment of restrained eating. Behaviour Research and Therapy 24, 213–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wardle, J (1990) Conditioning processes and cue exposure in the modification of excessive eating. Addictive Behaviors 15, 387–393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weingarten, HP (1983) Conditioned cues elicit eating in sated rats: A role for learning in meal initiation. Science 220, 431–433.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weingarten, HP (1984) Meal initiation controlled by learned cues: Effects of peripheral cholinergic blockade and cholecystokinin. Physiology and Behavior 32, 403–408.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weingarten, HP (1985) Stimulus control of eating: implications for a two-factor theory of hunger. Appetite 6, 387–401.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weingarten, HP & Kulikovsky, OT (1989) Taste-to-postingestive consequence conditioning: is the rise in sham feeding with repeated experience a learned phenomenon. Physiology and Behavior 45, 471–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wirtshafter, D & Davis, JD (1977) Set points and settling points, and the control of body weight. Physiology and Behavior 19, 75–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yeomans, MR (1996) Palatability and the microstructure of feeding in humans: The appetizer effect. Appetite 27, 119–133CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed