Eating Behaviour Flashcards
What main factors influence attitudes to food and eating behaviour?
Mood, Social Learning and Culture
In what way can mood effect eating behaviour?
Through binge eating and comfort eating
In what way does social learning effect eating behaviour?
Parental modelling & Media effects
In what way does cultural influences effect eating behaviour?
Ethnicity and social class
What did Powell and Khan (1995) find on cultural influence and eating behaviour?
They found that body dissatisfaction and related eating concerns were more characteristic of white women than black or Asian women.
What did Downbusch et al (1984) find on cultural influence and eating behaviour?
Found that among American adolescents, higher class females had a greater desire to be thin and were more likely to died to achieve this compared to lower class females.
What did Goode et al find on cultural influence and eating behaviour?
Found that healthy attitudes to eating were more likely to be found among higher income families.
How can mood affect your eating behaviour?
Many people comfort eat in a low mood. Individuals with bulimia nervosa tend to experience anxiety prior to binge eating episode, despite the fact it does not alleviate the low mood; this relationship is also seen in non-clinical populations.
What did Wegner et al find on mood and eating behaviour?
Students recorded their eatingpatterns and mood states over 2 weeks. Binge days were lower in mood state than non binge days.
What did Garg et al (2007) find on mood and eating behaviour?
They observed the food preferences of 38 participants as they watched a funny movie (sweet home Alabama) or sad movie (love story). They were offered buttered popcorn or grapes. Participants watching the sad film consumed 36% more popcorn than those watching the funny film, who ate more grapes. When given the nutritional information before the consumption of the unhealthy food, snacking dropped dramatically.
What did Davis et al (1988) find on mood and eating behaviour?
He studied patients with bulimia nervosa. Patients recorded their food intake and mood every hour for a number of days. The reports showed that negative mood states before a binge episode were higher than before a normal meal.
What is the issue with the relationship between mood and binge eating?
It is unclear how a binge eating episode is reinforcing in terms of mood as following a binge there is often a drop in mood.
What did Parker et al (2006) find on mood and eating behaviour?
Found that when chocolate was eaten as an emotional eating strategy is it more likely to prolong the negative mood.
What did Brown and Ogden (2004) find on social learning and eating behaviour?
Found that there were correlations between parents and their children in terms of snack food intake, eating motivations and body dissatisfaction.
How could parental modelling influence eating behaviour?
Children observe the attitudes and eating behaviour of their parents, and parents control the food brought and served at home.
What did Kotler et al (2012) find on social learning and eating behaviour?
Conducted two experiments to assess the role of media characters in influencing children’s food choice.
What was the first experiment Kotler et al (2012) did on social learning and eating behaviour?
Children were more likely to indicate a preference for one food over another when one was associated with tv characters with whom they were familiar. However, when children were asked to choose between a healthy food with a favoured character and a sugary or salty snack with an unfamiliar one, this effect did not happen.
What was the second experiment Kotler et al (2012) did on social learning and eating behaviour?
Children were more likely to try more pieces of a healthy food if a favoured character, in comparison with an unknown character, is promoting that food.
What did Mumford et al (19911) find about culture and eating behaviour?
Found that bulimia was greater among Asian school girls than white school girls.
What did Streigel-Moore et al (1996) find on culture and eating behaviour?
Found that black girls had more of a drive towards thinness than white girls.
What did Story et al (1995) find on culture and eating behaviour?
Found that a sample of American students high social social class was related to greater satisfaction with weight and lower rates of weight control behaviour.
What is homeostatis?
The process by which the body maintains a constant internal environment.
What is satiation?
The state of being satisfactorily full and unable to take on more.
What is aphagia?
Failure to eat when hungry
What is hyperphagia?
Abnormally increased appetite for and consumption of food, thought to be associated with a lesion or injury in the hypothalamus
What is leptin?
a peptide hormone produced by fat cells and involved in the regulation of appetite and energy metabolism
What is ghrelin?
A hormone that is secreted by cells in the stomach and promotes hunger before an expected meal, decreases in amount after eating, and promotes secretion of growth hormone
What is the lateral hypothalamus?
It is concerned with hunger. Damage to this area can cause reduced food intake. Stimulating this area causes a desire to eat.
What is the ventromedial hypothalamus?
It is concerned with satiation. Stimulating this area causes a reduced desire to eat.
What is Neuropeptide Y (NPY)?
A neurotransmitter found in the hypothalamus.
How is homHOMOeostatis maintained?
Via a negative feedback loop: this assumes that all body variables have a set point (or range)
What evidence is there that the hypothalamus plays a role in eating and in weight gain and loss?
Patients with tumours in the hypothalamus tend to become obsese.
How does the Lateral hypothalamus play a role in eating and weight gain and loss?
This area of the hypothalamus contains the feeding centre; it initiates or starts eating behaviour. It responds to decreased blood glucose and, an increase in ghrelin which is a hormone released from the stomach when it is empty.
How does the Ventromedial hypothalamus play a role in eating and weight gain/loss?
The VMH contains the satiety centre- it signals when you are full. This inhibits or stops eating behaviour. It responds to an increase in blood glucose, a decrease in ghrelin and CCK (a hormone when food is detected in the duodenum). It also responds to leptin, a long term satiety signal released by fat.
How does the VMH and LH work together to influence eating behaviour?
Hunger, leads to eating, which caused an increase in blood glucose, which activates the VMH, which creates a sensation of satiety, so eating stops. After a while there is a decrease in blood glucose, and the LH is activated, which makes us hunger and the cycle continues. P
What did Anad & Brodeck find about the LH and eating behaviour?
They found that aphragia (failure to eat when hungry) can be caused by damage to the LH in rats. Rats with these lesions will not eat.
What did Stellar find out about LH and eating behaviour?
Stimulation of this area causes eating behaviour in rats.
What did Wickens find out about Neuropeptide Y?
When injected into the hypothalamus of rats NPY causes them to immediately begin feeding even when satiated.
What is the PVN?
It detects the specific foods our body needs and consequently seems to be responsible for our many ‘craving.
What did Cummings et al (2004) find out about the role of ghrelin in eating behaviour?
He monitored PPs ghrelin levels every 5 minutes. PPs had to assess their level of hunger every 30 minutes. 5/6 participants had a significant correlation between ghrelin levels, emptiness of the stomach and hunger.
What does the cognitive aspect of food include?
The images, memory, sights and smells of food
Where is it thought the neural control of cognitive factors originates?
In the Amygdala and the Inferior frontal cortex.
What does the amygdala do?
Primarily used in the selection of foods on the basis of previous experience.
What does the Inferior frontal cortex do?
It receives message from the olfactory bulb (smell). Odours influence the taste of foods. Damage to the prefrontal cortex is thought to decrease eating because of diminished sensory responses to food odour and also probably taste. (Kolb and Whishaw)
What is the problem with the neural explanation in terms of it being adaptive?
For hunger to be adaptive, it must both anticipate and prevent energy deficit, not just react to them. It should promote levels of consumption that maintain bodily resources well above the optimal level to act as a buffer against future lack of food availability.
What is the limitation to the saying LH has a role in eating behaviour?
Damage to the LH also causes deficits in other aspects of behaviour (thirst and sex) not just hunger.
What did Sakuri et al find out about eating behaviour?
That it is controlled by neural circuits that run throughout the bran, and not just the hypothalamus.
What did Lutter et al (2008) find out about ghrelin?
Shown that the body produces extra quantities of the hormone ghrelin in response to stress. This is part of the bodies natural defence against stress as it reduces the depressive and anxious behaviours. Ghrelin also boosts appetite leading to increased comfort eating.
What are the real world applications of ghrelin research?
It suggests that blocking the body’s response to ghrelin may help people with a tendency to comfort eat to control their weight. However, this might reduce ghrelin’s beneficial response to stress.
What are the real world applications of NPY research?
Could use drugs to turn off NPY and reduce obesity.
What are the limitations of the Neural approach to eating behaviour?
- Reductionist, 2. Determinism. 3 Extrapolation of animal research 4. lab experiments may lack ecological validity, 5. physiological drives can be overridden.
What is a preload/taste test?
An experimental technique used in the control of eating behaviour where a participant is given a food and then told to ‘taste’ another food to see how much they will eat.
What is disinhibition?
Eating more as a result of loosening restraints in response to emotional distress, intoxication or ‘preloading’.
What is restraint?
Exerting a cognitive boundary for food intake.
WHo suggested the restraint theory?
Herman and Mack
What does the boundary model of the restraint theory say?
That our body has a set point which is determined by our biology. We try to maintain this through what we eat. If we go on a diet then we are imposing a cognitive boundary that is below our body weight set point. In restrained eaters the control is undermined by cognitive regulation rather than biological. The gap widens when people change between overating and dieting (Stroebe). Therefore dieters are less sensitive to hunger and satiety cues so the boundary is crossed. Thus the boundary mdoel is a combination of physiological and psychological (cognitive) processes.
What is the boundary model?
we have a set biological point which we try to maintain through eating. When we diet we set a cognitive limit which is below our body weight set point. This means that the dieter will try to eat less than is normal and will eat until they reach their self imposed cognitive boundary, whilst trying to ignore their physiological boundary. This causes two boundaries to be working against each other which could cause a diet to fail. Also if a dieter oversteps their cognitive boundary on a day this could lead to disinhibition which means they will eat more and go past their physiological boundary.
What did Herman &Mack (1975) find on restraint and overeating?
They gave partipants (dieters and non dieters) a pre-load food, either high or low calorie milshakes. Participants then told they are taking part in a taste preference test. They are left alone to do taste test in own time. The dieters ate more in the taste test if they had the high calorie preload. P
What did Wardle and Beales find on dieting and overeating?
They randomly assigned 27 obese women to either a diet group, an exercise group or a control group for 7 weeks. All participants took part in a laboratory procedure to assess their food intake. At week 4 food intake an dappetite were assessed before and after a preload. At week 6 food intake was assessed under stressful conditions. The result indicated the particpants in the diet condition ate more than those in the exercise group and control group.
What does Wardle and Beales study on dieting and overeating support?
It supports the idea that simply thinking about restricting food (as associated with the word ‘diet) can cause overeating.
What did Ruderman and Wilson find in regards to restraint theory?
They reported that restrained eaters consume significantly more food than the unrestrained eaters, irrespective of the preload. THis suggests that restraint theory is an accurate explanation for the failure of dieting due to disinhibition.
Why has the restraint theory been criticised?
The model has been criticised for not specifying the cognitive processes that lead to disinhibition and the ‘what the hell’ effect.
What are the real world applications for restraint theory?
Restraint is often recommended as a solution to excessive weight problems. However, if obese people try to diet and fail, this can leave them feeling depressed and like a failure. Therefore overeating could be a consequence of obesity if restraint is recommended as a treatment.
Why does Ogden criticise the restraint theory?
He points out that although dieters, bulimics and some anorexics do report episodes of overeating, restraint theory cannot explain the behaviour of a lot of anorexics. If trying not to eat results in overeating, then how do anorexics manage to starve themselves?
What is the theory of ironic processes of mental control?
Research in cognitive psychology has shown that attempting to suppress or deny a thought frequently has the opposite effect. Dieting often involves the decision to not eat certain foods or less of them, which results in a state of denial.
What study did Wegner et al (1987) do about the theory of ironic processes of mental control?
Asked some participants to NOT think about a white bear and ring the bell when they do. Also asked other participants to think about the bear. THose that were told to not think about the bear rang their bells more often.
What did Wegner admit about the theory of ironic processes of mental control?
He admits that the ‘ironic effects’ observed in research are not particularly huge.
What did Soetens et al find out about the theory of ironic processes?
PPs were divided into restraints and unrestrained eater and those in the restrained group were subdivided into those with either high or low disinhibition. THe disinhibited restrained group used more suppression than the other groups and also showed a rebound effect afterwards. THis shows that restrained eaters who tend to overeat try to repress thoughts about food more often but then think about it more afterwards.
What does Redden (2008) say about dieting?
Suggests that the key to successful dieting is paying attention to what is being eating. He claims that people like experiences less if they repeat them. So we should focus on the specific detail of the meal and reduce boredom.
What study did Redden do on dieting?
135 participants. Each given 22 jelly beans one at a time. As jelly beans were dispesned information was flashed into a computer green. Group one had general information (bean number 7), group two had specific information (cherry flaboured bean number 8). Partipants got bored with eating beans faster in group one, whilst group 2 enjoyed the task more.
What are anti-dieting programmes?
Replacing dieting with healthy eating programmes. Emphasise regulation of body hunger and satiety signals and prevention of inappropriate attitudes to food.
What sort of environment did our ancestors live in?
An environment of evolutionary adaptation
What would the evolutionary explanation be for the preference of meat?
Caused by decline in plant foods by receding forests 2 million years ago. Fossil based evidence shows daily diet derived mainly from animal based foods such as animal organs etc. high energy sources and thought to be the catalyst for brain development
What did Abrams show about early humans?
Through anthropological evidence he showed that all societies showed preference for animal foods and fats. Early humans would not have been able to survive on plant sources alone
What did Davis study about innate preferences for food?
Observed choices of children living in a paediatric unit. Found that young children had an innate, regulatory mechanism and make healthy food choices, but could only do so if healthy food choices were available, so food choice changed over time based on the environment
What did Desor et al show about innate preferences for food?
Investigated babies food and preferences based on facial expressions and sucking behaviour. Newborn babies demonstrate innate preference for sweet tasting food, and reject bitter tasting substances
What could be the evolutionary basis for food preferences?
Sweet food=fruit=natural fructose content-= energy
Bitter food=poison
Neophobia=fear of new foods (unknown =possibly dangerous)
What did Sandell and Breslin do in innate preferences for food?
Screened 35 adults for the hTAS2R38 bitter taste receptor. PPs rated the bitterness of various vegetables, some of which contained glucosinolates (toxic at high doses) and others that did not. Those with the sensitive gene rated the glucosinolate-containing vegetables as 60% more bitter than those with the insensitive form of the gene.
What did Gibson and Wardle do on innate food preferences?
Showed that the best way to predict which fruit and veg would be preferred by 4-5 year old was not how sweet they were but how calorie dense, hence the preference for bananas and potatoes. Demonstrates the evolved preference for calorie rich food.
How was bait shyness (taste aversion) discovered?
Discovered by farmers who would put poison in rats food, but rats would only eat a small portion and if they became ill they learned to avoid it.
What did Garcia et al find about taste aversion?
Rats made ill through radiation shorty after eating saccharin developed an aversion to it and associated their illness with saccharin.
What is the medicine effect?
Animals can learn preference for food that make them healthier, with any food eaten just before recovery from illness being preferred in the future
What did Garcia fine about the medicine effect?
That when a distinctive flavour is presented to a thiamine deficient rat and then followed by an injection of thiamine the animal would acquire a preference for that flavour
What are the limitations of research for the evolutionary theory?
Lab observations- controlled but may lack ecological validity
Food diaries may change eating behaviour
Self-report may inaccurate
Naturalistic observations may have risk of Hawthorne effect
Reductionist and deterministic
Has human evolution stopped or are we still evolving?
Difficult to falsify, so questionable validity
What are the strengths of the evolutionary explanation?
Lab experiments are controlled
Questionnaires and food diaries give insight into PPs real life
Can explain innate food preferences
Accounts for both nature and nurture
Focus in ultimate rather than proximate causes could provide more effective intervention strategies
What are the clinical characteristics of anorexia?
Weight loss below 85% normal BMI
Anxiety about being overweight
Cessation of menstruated period for 3 months- Amenorrhea
Body image distortion
What could be the cultural influence of anorexia?
Western standards of attractiveness are important in the development of AN. In western societies it is generally thought that ‘thinness’ is attractive also portray of thin models in media is thought to be a significant contributory factor especially to those with low self esteem.
What study did Hoek et al do on cultural influences of anorexia?
Examined records of 44, 192 people admitted to hospital between 1987-89 in Curaçao, a non-westernised Caribbean where it is acceptable to be overweight. They found six cases, a rate they claim is within the range of anorexia reported in Western counties
What study did Becker et al do on cultural influences of anorexia?
Studied eating behaviour among Fijian girls following he introduction of tv in 1995. Found the girls desire to lose weight became more like Western TV characters.
What did Yamamiya et al find on cultural for anorexia?
That if instructional intervention is given prior to media exposure this limits the adverse effects
What did Grabe and Hyde find on cultural influences to anorexia?
Found a difference between African-Americans and White and Hispanic females. African-Americans reported significantly less body dissatisfaction than other two groups
What did Pollack find about cultural difference?
That positive attitudes towards large body sizes in non-western cultures such as Fiji and Caribbean are associated with attractiveness, fertility and nurturance
What did Cachelin and Regan find about cultural differences in anorexia?
Found no significant differences in prevalence of disordered eating between African Americans and white participants.
What did Roberts et al find on cultural influences to anorexia?
Report that it is only in older adolescents that white populations have a higher incidence of anorexia than black populations
How can peer influence affect eating behaviour?
Peer acceptance during adolescence is particularly important. May be susceptible to peers influence in disordered patterns of eating
What did Eisenberg et al find about peer influence and anorexia?
In US dieting among friends was significantly related to unhealthy weight control behaviours such as diet pills or purging
What did Jones and Crawford find about peer influence and anorexia?
Teasing on overweight girls and overweight boys most likely enforce gender based ideals
What did Shroff and Thompson find on peer influence and anorexia?
Found no correlation among friends on measures if disordered eating in an adolescent sample.
What did Lunde et al find on peer influence to eating behaviour?
A study of 10 year olds found positive correlation between BMI and teasing for both boys and girls
How does Hilde Bruch explain anorexia? (Psychodynamic)
Originates in early childhood. Effective parents respond to child’s needs when hungry vs ineffective parents who fail to correctly respond, so children may grow up confused about their internal needs and become overly reliant on their parents. During adolescence they try to exert control and autonomy but often can’t, so may take excessive control over body shape by developing abnormal eating habits
What is the support for Bruch’s explantation for anorexia?
- observations in parents of adolescents with anorexia define their children physical needs rated than letting the child define their own (Steiner et al)
- people with AN rely excessively on the opinions of others, worry how others view then as feel lack of control over their lives (Button and Warren)
