Effect of dietary restraint and mood state on attentional processing of food cues

Effect of body-related information on food attentional bias in women with body weight dissatisfaction

Women with body weight dissatisfaction (BWD) have long-term negative assessments of their body weight, which are often associated with poor eating behavior. In this study, we investigated the effect of body-related information on the food cue processing and attention of women with BWD. Sixty-eight women were recruited and assigned to either a BWD (NPSS-F > 2) (n = 32) or a no body weight dissatisfaction (NBWD) group (NPSS-F < 1) (n = 36). We measured attentional bias to food cues (high- and low-calorie) with a food probe task after exposure to body-related information and recorded eye tracking data. Body-related images were presented prior to a pair of stimulus images (food-neutral or neutral-neutral). Body-related information and food type were repeated measure factors in our study. Our results showed that the first fixation duration bias for high-calorie foods was significantly longer than for low-calorie foods after exposure to overweight cues in the BWD group. Compared with the NBWD group, the BWD group showed longer first fixation duration bias for high-calorie foods after exposure to overweight cues. The direction for high-calorie foods was significantly more often than that for low-calorie foods in the BWD group after exposure to body-related information. Our findings suggest that compared to women with NBWD, women with BWD may be more susceptible to body-related information, resulting in increased attention to high-calorie foods.

Body mass index and attention bias of food cues in women: a mediation model of body weight dissatisfaction

Food attention bias could be used to indicate diet-related diseases in individuals with obesity. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and food attention bias, and the mediating role of body weight dissatisfaction (BWD) on this relationship in women. Seventy-five participants were recruited to complete a visual dot task with eye tracking. The results showed that BMI would positively predict response latency and duration bias on high-calorie foods; the relationship between BMI and response latency of high-calorie food was a complete mediation of BWD; the relationship between BMI and duration bias of high-calorie food was a complete mediation of BWD; and BWD positively predicts response latency and duration bias on high-calorie foods. These findings suggest a positive relationship between BMI and food attention bias, and the effect of a complete mediation of BWD in women.

Intranasal oxytocin reduces attentional bias to food stimuli

Attentional biases to food-related stimuli have been demonstrated in response to hunger as well as during restrained eating. Such biases are often associated with obesity, but healthy-weight individuals who do not self-report hunger have also demonstrated attentional biases to stimuli signalling food using laboratory-based cognitive tasks. Levels of the anorectic neuropeptide oxytocin are elevated by food intake and, when administered intranasally, oxytocin inhibits food intake in the laboratory. To investigate whether oxytocin can affect appetite via an action on attentional processes, 40 adults (29 women; mean age 24.0 years old) self-administered 24 IU of oxytocin or placebo intranasally. Forty minutes after administration, participants ate a small snack to maintain alertness and ameliorate deprivation-induced hunger before starting a computerized dot-probe attentional bias task that presented 180 trials of paired visual stimuli comprising neutral, food, social and/or romantic images (500 ms presentation time). Reaction times to probe stimuli that appeared after the offset of the visual images indicated a significant attentional bias to food pictures after placebo; this effect was significantly attenuated by oxytocin, p < .001. The effect of oxytocin on attentional bias to the food pictures was not altered by the type of stimulus paired with the food image, and was independent of BMI, age, sex, self-rated eating behaviour, and self-reported parental bonding; however, the effect was modulated by self-reported food cravings and trait stress. The findings support and extend previous work which has suggested that oxytocin can counteract attentional biases to food-related stimuli in a sample with anorexia by demonstrating the same effect for the first time in a cohort who do not have an eating disorder.

Relationship between Emotional Eating, Consumption of Hyperpalatable Energy-Dense Foods, and Indicators of Nutritional Status: A Systematic Review

People's health is closely linked to their diet. Diet can be defined as the set of foods that are consumed in a day, and it is susceptible to being altered by various factors, such as physiological, environmental, psychological, and social. These, in turn, can be affected by an inadequate diet and/or a dysregulation of emotions. Emotions are an immediate response by the organism informing it of the degree of favorability of a certain stimulus or situation. Moods are similar to emotions but more intense and prolonged. Some studies indicate that the consumption of hyperpalatable energy-dense foods may be related to emotional eating. Emotional eating is characterized by the excessive consumption of hyperpalatable energy-dense foods, rich in sugars and fats, in response to negative emotions. But several reports also indicate that emotional eating may be associated with the presence of positive emotions, so further analysis of the available information is necessary. Consuming higher amounts of hyperpalatable energy-dense foods can lead to the accumulation of energy in the body that results in an increase in body weight, as well as other associated diseases. Obesity is the world's leading diet-related health problem. The objective of this work was to carry out a systematic review of the available literature using the Cochrane methodology, in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, to evaluate the relationship between emotional eating, the consumption of hyperpalatable energy-dense foods, and indicators of nutritional status. An exhaustive search in different databases yielded 9431 scientific articles, 45 of which met the inclusion criteria. This review underscores the fact that knowing and understanding the reasons why people consume hyperpalatable energy-dense foods and the possible connection with their emotional eating can provide key data for improving and personalizing patients' nutritional treatment. This in turn can encourage compliance with treatment plans to improve people's health and quality of life using an interdisciplinary approach.

Visual cues associated with sweet taste increase short-term eating and grab attention in healthy volunteers

Most studies that examine responses to food cues use images of actual foods as stimuli. Since foods are rewarding in multiple ways, it then becomes difficult to try and partial out the role of the importance of different aspects of food reward. Here we aimed to evaluate the impact of novel visual cues specifically associated with the immediate sensory reward from a liked sweet taste. In the training phase, one visual cue (CSsweet) was associated with the experience of sweet taste (10%sucrose) and a second, control cue (CSneutral) with a neutral taste (artificial saliva) using a disguised training procedure. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 45) were given an ad libitum snack intake test 30 min post-training, either labelled with CSsweet or CSneutral. Total caloric consumption was significantly higher in the CSsweet (650 ± 47 kcal) than CSneutral (477 ± 45 kcal) condition, but ratings of liking for the snacks did not differ significantly between conditions. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 80) exhibited an overall attentional bias (22.1 ± 9.9 ms) for the CSsweet relative to CSneutral cue (assessed using a dot-probe task), however rated liking for the CSsweet did not change significantly after cue-sweet training. Likewise, measures of expected satiety for drinks labelled with CSsweet did not differ significantly from CSneutral. Overall these two experiments provide evidence that associations between neutral visual cues and the experience of a liked sweet taste leads to cue-potentiated eating in the presence of the CSsweet cue. With no evidence that cue-sweet training altered rated liking for the visual cues, and in keeping with extant literature on the dissociation of hedonic and rewarding properties of food rewards, we propose this potentiation effect to reflect increased incentive salience.

Mood-induced changes in the cortical processing of food images in bulimia nervosa

BACKGROUND

Negative mood often triggers binge eating in bulimia nervosa (BN). We investigated motivational salience as a possible underlying mechanism using event-related potentials (ERPs) as indicators of motivated attention allocation (P300) and sustained processing (LPP).

METHODS

We collected ERPs (P300: 350-400 ms; LPP: 600-1000 ms) from 21 women with full-syndrome or partially remitted BN and 21 healthy women (HC), matched for age and body mass index. Idiosyncratic negative and neutral situations were used to induce corresponding mood states (counterbalanced), before participants viewed images of high- and low-calorie foods and neutral objects, and provided ratings for pleasantness and desire to eat.

RESULTS

P300 was larger for foods than objects; LPP was largest for high-calorie foods, followed by low-calorie foods, then objects. The BN group showed an increased desire to eat high-calorie foods under negative mood and stronger mood induction effects on ERPs than the HC group, with generally reduced P300 and a small increase in LPP for high-calorie foods. Effects were limited to circumscribed electrode positions. Exploratory analyses showed clearer effects when comparing high vs. low emotional eaters.

CONCLUSION

We argue that negative mood decreased the availability of cognitive resources (decreased P300) in BN, thereby facilitating disinhibition and food cravings (increased desire-to-eat ratings). Increased sustained processing might be linked to emotional eating tendencies rather than BN pathology per se, and reflect approach motivation, conflict, or regulatory processes. Negative mood appears to induce complex changes in food image processing, whose understanding may contribute to the development of tailored interventions in the future.

Relationship between Dispositional Mindfulness, Psychological Health, and Diet Quality among Healthy Midlife Adults

Mindfulness, a practice of non-judgmental awareness of present experience, has been associated with reduced eating psychopathology and emotion-driven eating. However, it remains unclear whether mindfulness relates to diet quality. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine whether dispositional mindfulness is associated with diet quality and to explore psychological factors relating dispositional mindfulness to diet quality. Community-dwelling adults (N = 406; M_age = 43.19, SD = 7.26; M_{body mass index [BMI]} = 27.08, SD = 5.28; 52% female) completed ratings of dispositional mindfulness, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, positive affect (PA), and negative affect (NA). Dietary intake was assessed using the Block Food Frequency Questionnaire, from which the 2015 Healthy Eating Index was derived. Analyses were conducted using the "lavaan" package in R with bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals (BootCI). Age, sex, race, education, and BMI were entered as covariates in all models. Higher dispositional mindfulness was associated with higher diet quality (β = 0.11, p = 0.03), and this effect was mediated through lower depressive symptoms (indirect effect β = 0.06, p = 0.02, BootCI = 0.104-1.42, p = 0.03). Dispositional mindfulness was negatively correlated with perceived stress (β = -0.31, p < 0.01) and NA (β = -0.43, p < 0.01), as well as positively correlated with PA (β = -0.26, p < 0.01). However, these factors were unrelated to diet quality. These cross-sectional data provide initial evidence that dispositional mindfulness relates to diet quality among midlife adults, an effect that may be explained in part by less depressive symptomatology. Given that lifestyle behaviors in midlife are leading determinants of risk for cardiovascular disease and neurocognitive impairment in late life, interventions to enhance mindfulness in midlife may mitigate disease risk. Additional research assessing the impact of mindfulness interventions on diet quality are warranted.

The Effect of Hunger and Satiety on Mood-Related Food Craving

In addition to hunger, which results from food deprivation, fasting, or restrained eating, food craving is thought to be one of the major factors influencing eating behavior. Although food craving occurs in healthy humans with normal eating behavior, research suggests pronounced food craving to be a risk factor for binging food, which in turn might cause weight gain and obesity. In addition, negative mood seems to induce binge eating, although the underlying processes are not clearly understood. To examine these effects on momentary food craving more closely, we implemented a food cue-reactivity paradigm in 33 normal-weight females (mean age = 25.1 years, mean BMI = 21.6). Mood (negative vs. neutral) and state of food deprivation (hunger vs. satiety) were varied systematically. Self-rated craving was significantly higher in hungry compared to sated states. Moreover, in neutral mood, high-caloric foods modulated craving, i.e., hungry and sated participants preferred savory food and sweet food, respectively. In negative mood, this differential effect of savory and sweet items was absent. In summary, the state of hunger has a huge impact on food craving, which is further modulated by emotional state. Future research should consider hunger to be of high relevance for effects investigated in food-related paradigms. Our findings in healthy women of normal weight support etiological models of disturbed eating behavior and are in line with common interventions targeting eating schedules and mood regulation.