A recent study (Halliwell et al., 2010) suggests that young girls can be protected against the negative effects of ultra-thin models on their body image. One group of 10-13 year old girls were shown a video about the tricks used to unrealistic portrayals of models. When this group were later shown pictures of ultra-thin models they didn’t rate their body satisfaction and confidence as low as girls not exposed to the video. This suggests that understanding the tricks of the advertising trade may be useful in inoculating girls (and boys) against the potential effects on eating disorders.
Posts archived in Eating behaviour
It seems our expectation about what we eat directly affects how hungry or satisfied we feel afterwards. In one study, when participants ate soup, not knowing that there was a hidden pump connected to their soup bowl which could surreptitiously alter the amount of soup available once eating started, their reported satiety related to how much soup they perceived they had consumed and not the actual amount.
That experiment was adapted from one using fruit smoothies where participants were shown either a small or a large portion of fruit ‘used’ to make their smoothie. Their perception of satiety was directly linked to their perception of the quantity of fruit seen.
These findings, if reliable and valid, have real implications. When we consume a diet drink or food, or a reduced calorie or reduced sugar/fat food, does this affect how we feel afterwaards? Do we feel hungry again much sooner because of our perception? If this is so, then using different descriptions might have a beneficial effect on those people who are trying to lose weight. One famous firm has for some time been marketing ‘hearty’ soups – this may have been a very smart move!
So many people love eating chocolate, and believe it is a mood-influencing food giving pleasure plus a lift in mood – a happyfood!
Now research suggests that many depressed people really do eat more chocolate. These findings came from both men and women who scored high on a psychometric depression scale but who were not receiving medication. There were no reported increases in other antioxident-rich foods, or other sources of caffeine, fat or sugar, between these depressed adults and non-depressed adults, just the increased chocolate consumption. What is not known is why the chocolate intake increased.
The evolutionary hypothesis explains our liking of chocolate as a combination of pleasures – the sweetness, the creamy texture in the mouth perhaps in some way reminiscent of breast milk – with the high energy-denseness of this food. But there is a complete lack of evidence that breast milk, even in mothers who do eat a lot of chocolate, has any chocolate flavour! So this does not explain why consumption of chocolate rather than any other sweet and creamy food increased in depressed people. Is it the pleasure which is the key factor? Or is it the cultural perception of chocolate as a reward food? Or is there another reason?
Meat was an important source of nutrition for ancestral humans (as it is today, MacDonalds aside). It has been suggested that the importance of meat meant that men often traded it for other favours such as forging allegiances or for sex (Stanford, 1999 – see pages 101,
130 and 131 of our A2 Complete Companion). Observations of animal and human behaviour have been used to support this ‘meat for sex’ hypothesis, however a recently published study says the suggestion is baseless. Gilby et al. (2010) conducted an observational study of chimpanzees over a 28 year period (see here and here) and found no evidence that males hunted more when females were most fertile, nor were they more likely to share meat with fertile females. However there continues to be evidence that supports the meat for sex hypothesis (see here). This study by Gomes and Boesch (2006) found direct evidence of meat exchange in another study of wild chimpanzees. It may be that males exchange meat on a long-term basis i.e. they don’t do it just when a female is fertile but provide meat continually so they can take advantage of fertile periods when they occur.
Research in the USA is showing up a link between obese pregnant women and their babies’ body fat composition. This might not seem surprising, but the concern is that being born with a higher proportion of fat could lead to future adult health disorders for these newborn babies. And the proportion of obese adults, whether or not mothers, is increasing fast and is a real health issue.