Visual palatability of food in patients with eating disorders and dieting women

doi:10.1016/0005-7967(91)90069-F

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Volume 29, Issue 4, 1991, Pages 337-341

https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(91)90069-F Get rights and content

Abstract

The effects of 19 meals of different caloric content on slides on palatability and hypothetical duration of consumption were investigated in 7 patients with anorexia nervosa, 17 patients with bulimia nervosa at the beginning and after 8 weeks of hospital treatment. Nine healthy females served as controls. At the beginning of treatment, palatability of low caloric food was significantly higher and hypothetical duration of consumption of high caloric food was significantly longer in patients when compared to controls. After 8 weeks, in the patients palatability of low caloric food had decreased. Dislike for high caloric food remained stable in anorexics.

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Cited by (10)

Reward processing in anorexia nervosa
2012, Neuropsychologia
Citation Excerpt :
Similarly, patients with AN have been reported to prefer less (or ‘want’ less) the taste of fattening foods more than HCs, where perceptions and preferences for sweetness did not differ (Simon, Bellisle, Monneuse, Samuel-Lajeunesse, & Drewnowski, 1993). Patients with eating disorders (including AN) have also been reported to prefer (‘want’) high-calorie foods significantly less than low-calorie foods (Stoner, Fedoroff, Andersen, & Rolls, 1996) and compared to HCs, reported lower preference ratings toward pictures of high energy foods, which remained following 8 weeks treatment (although high palatability ratings for low caloric foods was reduced following treatment (Bossert et al., 1991)). Others have not revealed differences between eating disorder groups’ (ANR, ANB, BN) ability to provide intensity (sweetness) ratings of 20 dairy solutions with 5 varying levels of fat and of sucrose, before and after treatment (Stoner et al., 1996; Sunday & Halmi, 1990).
Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) demonstrate a relentless engagement in behaviors aimed to reduce their weight, which leads to severe underweight status, and occasionally death. Neurobiological abnormalities, as a consequence of starvation are controversial: evidence, however, demonstrates abnormalities in the reward system of patients, and recovered individuals. Despite this, a unifying explanation for reward abnormalities observed in AN and their relevance to symptoms of the illness, remains incompletely understood. Theories explaining reward dysfunction have conventionally focused on anhedonia, describing that patients have an impaired ability to experience reward or pleasure. We review taste reward literature and propose that patients’ reduced responses to conventional taste-reward tasks may reflect a fear of weight gain associated with the caloric nature of the tasks, rather than an impaired ability to experience reward. Consistent with this, we propose that patients are capable of ‘liking’ hedonic taste stimuli (e.g., identifying them), however, they do not ‘want’ or feel motivated for the stimuli in the same way that healthy controls report. Recent brain imaging data on more complex reward processing tasks provide insights into fronto-striatal neural circuit dysfunction related to altered reward processing in AN that challenges the relevance of anhedonia in explaining reward dysfunction in AN. In this way, altered activity of the anterior cingulate cortex and striatum could explain patients’ pathological engagement in behaviors they consider rewarding (e.g., self-starvation) that are otherwise aversive or punishing, to those without the eating disorder. Such evidence for altered patterns of brain activity associated with reward processing tasks in patients and recovered individuals may provide important information about mechanisms underlying symptoms of AN, their future investigation, and the development of treatment approaches.
Relation of dietary restraint scores to activation of reward-related brain regions in response to food intake, anticipated intake, and food pictures
2011, NeuroImage
Citation Excerpt :
Obese versus lean individuals rate high-fat and high-sugar foods as more pleasant and consume more of such foods (McGloin et al., 2002; Nicklas et al., 2003; Rissanen et al., 2002) and work harder to earn food (Johnson, 1974; Saelens and Epstein, 1996). Likewise, women with versus without bulimia nervosa typically rate sweet tastes as more pleasant, do not show normative decreases in pleasantness ratings of sweet tastes when consumed over time (Drewnowski et al., 1992; Franko et al., 1994; Rodin et al., 1990), and report greater urges to binge and less confidence in their ability to control their food intake after exposure to real food (Bulik et al., 1996; Staiger et al., 2000) but not after exposure to pictures of palatable foods (Bossert et al., 1991). Individuals with versus without bulimic pathology also rate pictures of food as more interesting and arousing and report a greater desire to eat, even when sated (Karhunen et al., 1997; Mauler et al., 2006).
Prospective studies indicate that individuals with elevated dietary restraint scores are at increased risk for future bulimic symptom onset, suggesting that these individuals may show hyper-responsivity of reward regions to food and food cues. Thus, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the relation of dietary restraint scores to activation of reward-related brain regions in response to receipt and anticipated receipt of chocolate milkshake and exposure to pictures of appetizing foods in 39 female adolescents (mean age = 15.5 ± 0.94). Dietary restraint scores were positively correlated with activation in the right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in response to milkshake receipt. However, dietary restraint scores did not correlate with activation in response to anticipated milkshake receipt or exposure to food pictures. Results indicate that individuals who report high dietary restraint have a hyper-responsivity in reward-related brain regions when food intake is occurring, which may increase risk for overeating and binge eating.
Pleasure for visual and olfactory stimuli evoking energy-dense foods is decreased in anorexia nervosa
2010, Psychiatry Research
Citation Excerpt :
In contrast, AN-R patients experienced similar olfactory and visual pleasure for the stimuli representing low energy density foods (viz., fruits). The influence of macronutrient composition or caloric load of food stimuli on AN patients' attitude to foods is well-known from several studies (Bossert et al., 1991; Vaz et al., 1998; Giel et al., 2010). These works revealed that, relative to HC participants, AN patients avoid high energetic foods and that hedonic ratings are lower for high- than low-caloric food pictures.
Although patients with anorexia nervosa have been suggested to be anhedonic, few experiments have directly measured their sensory pleasure for a range of food and non-food stimuli. This study aimed to examine whether restrictive anorexia nervosa (AN-R) patients displayed: i) a generalized decline in sensory pleasure or only in food-related sensory pleasure; ii) a modification of hedonic responses to food cues (liking) and of the desire to eat foods (wanting) as a function of their motivational state (hunger vs. satiety) and energy density of foods (high vs. low). Forty-six female participants (AN-R n = 17; healthy controls (HC) n = 29) reported before/after lunch their pleasure for pictures/odorants representing foods of different energy density and non-food objects. They also reported their desire to eat the foods evoked by the sensory stimuli, and completed the Physical Anhedonia Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory. AN-R and HC participants did not differ on liking ratings when exposed to low energy-density food or to non-food stimuli. The two groups also had similar physical anhedonia scores. However, compared to HC, AN-R reported lower liking ratings for high energy food pictures regardless of their motivational state. Olfactory pleasure was reduced only during the pre-prandial state in the AN-R group. The wanting ratings showed a distinct pattern since AN-R participants reported less desire to eat the foods representing both low and high energy densities, but the effect was restricted to the pre-prandial state. Taken together these results reflect more the influence of core symptoms in anorexia nervosa (fear of gaining weight) than an overall inability to experience pleasure.
Hunger and satiety in anorexia nervosa: fMRI during cognitive processing of food pictures
2006, Brain Research
Citation Excerpt :
Healthy persons assign positive emotional valence to food stimuli that is enhanced by hunger (Lozano et al., 1999). AN patients, who are preoccupied with food irrespectively of hunger, however, report negative valence of food stimuli (Bossert et al., 1991; Vaz et al., 1998). So far, the influence of hunger states on valence ratings of food in AN has not been investigated.
Neuroimaging studies of visually presented food stimuli in patients with anorexia nervosa have demonstrated decreased activations in inferior parietal and visual occipital areas, and increased frontal activations relative to healthy persons, but so far no inferences could be drawn with respect to the influence of hunger or satiety. Thirteen patients with AN and 10 healthy control subjects (aged 13–21) rated visual food and non-food stimuli for pleasantness during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a hungry and a satiated state. AN patients rated food as less pleasant than controls. When satiated, AN patients showed decreased activation in left inferior parietal cortex relative to controls. When hungry, AN patients displayed weaker activation of the right visual occipital cortex than healthy controls. Food stimuli during satiety compared with hunger were associated with stronger right occipital activation in patients and with stronger activation in left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, the middle portion of the right anterior cingulate, and left middle temporal gyrus in controls. The observed group differences in the fMRI activation to food pictures point to decreased food-related somatosensory processing in AN during satiety and to attentional mechanisms during hunger that might facilitate restricted eating in AN.
Subliminal fear priming potentiates negative facial reactions to food pictures in women with anorexia nervosa
2010, Psychological Medicine
Influencing the body schema through the feeling of satiety
2022, Scientific Reports

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^†: Now at the Free University of Berlin.

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Visual palatability of food in patients with eating disorders and dieting women

Abstract

Appetite

Appetite

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Physiology and Behavior

Journal of Psychosomatic Research

Physiology and Behavior

How patients describe bulimia or binge eating

Psychological Medicine

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-revised (DSM IIIR)

Physiological role of pleasure

Science, New York

Influence of internal factors on the pleasantness of gustative sweet sensation

Comments in Behavioural Biology, Part A1

Attitudes to food, eating and weight in acutely ill and recovered anorectics

British Journal of Clinical Psychology

Bulimia nervosa: Treatment and short-term outcome

Psychological Medicine