Contribution of psychological factors to the affective reactions towards food taste in under- and over-nutrition
Oral presentation
[Invitation pre-symposium ECRO 2021]
The experience of eating and drinking is a complex and multifaceted process in which taste perception plays an important role. In particular, taste perception has been implicated in the modulation of ingestive behaviour such as food preferences and intake patterns. Importantly, previous work on this subject is largely based on the idea that individuals with impaired taste perception may have altered eating behaviours that contribute to diet- and nutrition-related conditions including malnutrition or obesity. To further characterize the relationship between taste perception and weight status, we carried out the sensory and affective analysis of responsiveness to sweet and bitter tastes in healthy subjects, patients suffering from eating disorders and individuals with different weight categories (underweight and overweight). Using multiple-sip temporal-liking, time-intensity and signal detection methodologies as well as automatic facial expression analysis, we found that the affective rather than the sensory component appears to be playing a crucial role in the reaction to food items, which may be biased and exacerbated by motivational states such as hunger or stress. Our results also suggest that variations in the ability to discriminate between sweet-fat mixtures among weight status categories are redundant to the extent that such differences are no clinical significance in actual intake behaviour.
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement Nº 754446 – Athenea3i.
The experience of eating and drinking is a complex and multifaceted process in which taste perception plays an important role. In particular, taste perception has been implicated in the modulation of ingestive behaviour such as food preferences and intake patterns. Importantly, previous work on this subject is largely based on the idea that individuals with impaired taste perception may have altered eating behaviours that contribute to diet- and nutrition-related conditions including malnutrition or obesity. To further characterize the relationship between taste perception and weight status, we carried out the sensory and affective analysis of responsiveness to sweet and bitter tastes in healthy subjects, patients suffering from eating disorders and individuals with different weight categories (underweight and overweight). Using multiple-sip temporal-liking, time-intensity and signal detection methodologies as well as automatic facial expression analysis, we found that the affective rather than the sensory component appears to be playing a crucial role in the reaction to food items, which may be biased and exacerbated by motivational states such as hunger or stress. Our results also suggest that variations in the ability to discriminate between sweet-fat mixtures among weight status categories are redundant to the extent that such differences are no clinical significance in actual intake behaviour.
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement Nº 754446 – Athenea3i.