Creativity needs some serendipity: Reflections on a career in ingestive behavior

Behavioral phenotypes for childhood obesity: 2017 Alan N. Epstein Research Award

The percentage of children in the United States with obesity has more than tripled since the 1970s. Despite considerable work in this area, there has been limited success in the long-term treatment and prevention of childhood obesity. In order for intervention approaches to be successful, it will be crucial to study individual variation and the underlying mechanisms that impact human ingestive behavior. Research in my laboratory has focused on identifying behavioral phenotypes for childhood obesity which may be used to develop targeted intervention approaches that are tailored to a child's individual predisposition. This work has included studying select appetitive traits among weight-discordant siblings and unrelated children to elucidate potential differences in children's ability to regulate short-term energy intake and susceptibility to eating in response to food cues in the environment. I am greatly honored to be the recipient of the 2017 Alan N. Epstein Research Award from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB). I want to acknowledge and express my sincere gratitude to my mentors and colleagues who have supported me and provided guidance throughout my research career and to my research team and students for their hard work on our studies.

Multisensory influence on eating behavior: Hedonic consumption

Research in obesity has traditionally focused on prevention strategies and treatments aimed at changing lifestyle habits. However, recent research suggests that eating behavior is a habit regulated not only by homeostatic mechanisms, but also by the hedonic pathway that controls appetite and satiety processes. Cognitive, emotional, social, economic, and cultural factors, as well as organoleptic properties of food, are basic aspects to consider in order to understand eating behavior and its impact on health. This review presents a multisensory integrative view of food at both the homeostatic and non-homeostatic levels. This information will be of scientific interest to determine behavior drivers leading to overeating and, thus, to propose effective measures, at both the individual and population levels, for the prevention of obesity and associated metabolic diseases.