Sensing the Snacking Experience: Bodily Sensations Linked to the Consumption of Healthy and Unhealthy Snack Foods-A Comparison between Body Mass Index Levels.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has highlighted the need for immediate action regarding the escalating global prevalence of overweight and obesity. Based on the need for long-term strategies supporting dietary behaviour changes, the concept of 'interoception' (i.e., sensing the body's internal state) has been proposed as promising for understanding and controlling food intake behaviours. As eating behaviours are motivated by the need for securing energy demands as well as the desire for pleasure, investigating the bodily sensations perceived in relation to food consumption can support our understanding of human food and eating behaviours. Here, a consumer study was conducted on 286 Danish consumers to explore the interoceptive experience of snack food consumption. This study included an investigation of the consumers' interoceptive capabilities and ability to feel pleasure, intuitive eating behaviours, snack food consumption frequency, the drivers of snack food consumption, food-related pleasure, and post-ingestive sensations linked to snack food consumption. The study was conducted on consumers with different Body Mass Index (BMI) levels to study potential differences between these groups. The study showed normal interoceptive capabilities and abilities to feel pleasure, with no differences between BMI groups. Regarding intuitive eating, the study found intuitive eating to be more prevalent among the group holding normal BMI. No significant differences between BMI groups were found in terms of snack intake frequency. However, differences between BMI groups were found in terms of: the drivers of snack consumption, the aspects bringing food-related pleasure from snack consumption, and the post-ingestive sensations felt after eating snack foods.

Measuring Pleasure from Food-Validation of the Food Pleasure Scale by Multiple Techniques and Mixed Methods.

The development of scales and questionnaires to assess pleasure perception has gained prominence, particularly for evaluating anhedonia in mental disorders. The Food Pleasure Scale is a comprehensive tool exclusively dedicated to measuring pleasure perception from food and food-related experiences. This study aimed to evaluate the face validity and consistency reliability of the Food Pleasure Scale using a mixed methods approach. Twenty-two participants completed the Food Pleasure Scale questionnaire and participated in in-depth interviews to understand their interpretation of the scale items. The interview data underwent thematic analysis, and the quantitative survey data was compared to the qualitative interview responses. Results indicated a high level of understanding of all items in the Food Pleasure Scale, confirming its face validity and applicability. The mixed methods approach supported the consistency reliability, showing consistency between quantitative measures and participants' explicit and implicit expressions of food pleasure. Furthermore, the study revealed a novel aspect related to food pleasure: the concept of "making an effort". Overall, this study highlights the comprehensibility, validity, and potential of the Food Pleasure Scale in consumer studies. It effectively captures the subjective experience of pleasure derived from food and food-related encounters, making it a valuable tool for further research in this domain.

Cadaverine as a Potential Spoilage Indicator in Skin-Packed Beef and Modified-Atmosphere-Packed Beef.

This study investigated cadaverine as a spoilage indicator in commercial beef products stored under conditions favourable for the growth of lactic acid bacteria. Samples included vacuum-skin-packed entrecotes (EB) aged up to 42 days and modified-atmosphere-packed (70% O2 + 30% CO2) minced beef (MB) stored at 5 °C. Two MB product lines were analysed: one stored aerobically two days post-slaughter before mincing and another stored for 14 days in vacuum packaging prior to mincing. Sensory assessment/evaluation and microbial analysis were performed throughout the shelf life of the products and compared to cadaverine levels measured using LC-MS/MS. Cadaverine concentrations in EB reached approximately 40,000 µg/kg on the "best before" date, while remaining below 50 µg/kg in both MB products on the corresponding date. While cadaverine concentrations in EB displayed a consistent increase, suggesting its potential as a spoilage indicator post-ageing, the low concentrations in MB, did not correlate with sensory assessments, revealing its limitations as a universal spoilage marker. In conclusion, it is necessary to conduct product-specific studies to evaluate the applicability of cadaverine as a spoilage indicator for beef products.

Sensory Interactions between Sweetness and Fat in a Chocolate Milk Beverage.

Fat and sugar-reduced foods and beverages have become increasingly popular for a variety of reasons, mainly relating to health and wellbeing. Depending on the food or beverage, it may be difficult to reduce the fat and/or sugar content and still maintain optimal sensory properties for the specific product. One way of approaching the problem is to gain a better understanding of how a product is affected by a reduction in fat and/or sugar. This paper aims to investigate the sensory interactions between fat and sweetness perception in a chocolate-flavored milk beverage by using a descriptive analysis with a trained sensory panel. The reduction of fat significantly reduced the sweetness intensity of the chocolate milk, while the reduction of sucrose significantly decreased the cream flavor and the fruity and lactic flavor. The perception of acesulfame-K was affected by fat concentration, similarly to sucrose. These results highlight the importance of considering the effects of reducing either sugar and fat on product attributes that are not directly related to the sugar or fat.

Assessing mechanisms behind crossmodal associations between visual textures and temperature concepts.

In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in crossmodal correspondences, including those involving temperature. However, only a few studies have explicitly examined the underlying mechanisms behind temperature-related correspondences. Here, we investigated the relative roles of an underlying affective mechanism and a semantic path (i.e., regarding the semantic knowledge related to a single common source identity or meaning) in crossmodal associations between visual textures and temperature concepts using an associative learning paradigm. Two online experiments using visual textures previously shown to be associated with low and high thermal effusivity (Experiment 1) and visual textures with no consensual associations with thermal effusivity (Experiment 2) were conducted. Participants completed a speeded categorization task before and after an associative learning task, in which they learned mappings between the visual textures and specific affective or semantic stimuli related to low and high temperatures. Across the two experiments, both the affective and semantic mappings influenced the categorization of visual textures with the hypothesized temperatures, but there was no influence on the reaction times. The effect of learning semantic mappings was larger than that of affective ones in both experiments, suggesting that a semantic path has more weight than an affective mechanism in the formation of the associations studied here. The associations studied here could be modified through associative learning establishing correlations between visual textures and either affective or semantic stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Crossmodal associations between visual textures and temperature concepts.

Visual textures are critical in how individuals form sensory expectations about objects, which include somatosensory properties such as temperature. This study aimed to uncover crossmodal associations between visual textures and temperature concepts. In Experiment 1 (N = 193), we evaluated crossmodal associations between 43 visual texture categories and different temperature concepts (via temperature words such as cold and hot) using an explicit forced-choice test. The results revealed associations between striped, cracked, matted, and waffled visual textures and high temperatures and between crystalline and flecked visual textures and low temperatures. In Experiment 2 (N = 247), we conducted six implicit association tests (IATs) pairing the two visual textures most strongly associated with low (crystalline and flecked) and high (striped and cracked) temperatures with the words cold and hot as per the results of Experiment 1. When pairing the crystalline and striped visual textures, the results revealed that crystalline was matched to the word cold, and striped was matched to the word hot. However, some associations found in the explicit test were not found in the IATs. In Experiment 3 (N = 124), we investigated how mappings between visual textures and concrete entities may influence crossmodal associations with temperature and these visual textures. Altogether, we found a range of association strengths and automaticity levels. Importantly, we found evidence of relative effects. Furthermore, some of these crossmodal associations are partly influenced by indirect mappings to concrete entities.

The Relationship between Social Anhedonia and Perceived Pleasure from Food-An Exploratory Investigation on a Consumer Segment with Depression and Anxiety.

Anhedonia, the diminished ability to experience pleasure, is a key symptom of a range of mental and neurobiological disorders and is associated with altered eating behavior. This research study investigated the concept of anhedonia in relation to mental disorders and the perception of pleasure from food to better understand the link between anhedonia and eating behavior. A consumer survey (n = 1051), including the Food Pleasure Scale, the Chapman Revised Social Anhedonia Scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale, was conducted to explore the perception of pleasure from food among people with anhedonic traits. Comparative analyses were performed between people with symptoms of depression and/or anxiety and people with no symptoms of these conditions. A segmentation analysis was furthermore performed based on three levels of anhedonia: Low, Intermediate and High anhedonia. Thus, insights into how food choice and eating habits may be affected by different levels of anhedonia are provided for the first time. Our findings showed that the 'Low anhedonia' segment found pleasure in all aspects of food pleasure, except for the aspect 'eating alone'. 'Eating alone' was, however, appreciated by the 'Intermediate anhedonia' and 'High anhedonia' segments. Both the 'Intermediate anhedonia' and 'High anhedonia' segments proved that their perceptions of food pleasure in general were affected by anhedonia, wherein the more complex aspects in particular, such as 'product information' and 'physical sensation', proved to be unrelated to food pleasure. For the 'High anhedonia' segment, the sensory modalities of food were also negatively associated with food pleasure, indicating that at this level of anhedonia the food itself is causing aversive sensations and expectations. Thus, valuable insights into the food pleasure profiles of people with different levels of anhedonia have been found for future research in the fields of mental illness, (food) anhedonia, and consumer behaviors.

Is Stress Taking the Pleasure Out of Food?-A Characterization of the Food Pleasure Profiles, Appetite, and Eating Behaviors of People with Chronic Stress.

Psychological stressors frequently occur in modern society, and are associated with general anhedonic traits (inability to experience pleasure) and altered eating behavior. As eating behavior is largely motivated by a desire for pleasure, the Food Pleasure Scale (FPS) was introduced as a new research tool for investigating aspects of pleasure from food-related experiences. Thereby, insights on whether some aspects of pleasure are more affected by stress than others can be investigated, and can help explain why changes in eating behavior are seen when under the influence of stress. A consumer survey including n = 190 Danish consumers all with moderate or high levels of perceived stress was conducted to explore the perception of pleasure from food, general appetite, meal patterns, as well as specific food preferences. The study showed that the majority found pleasure in the sensory modalities of food, as well as in the 'comforting' aspects of food pleasure. Furthermore, the moderately stressed respondents had fewer main meals and more post-dinner snacks and night meals, as compared to before falling ill, whereas the highly stressed group showed signs of anhedonic traits and losing appetite altogether. The present study contributes to our understanding of how a common condition, such as chronic stress, can affect individual, as well as public, health.

Effects and Implications of COVID-19 for the Human Senses, Consumer Preferences, Appetite and Eating Behaviour: Volume I.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) evolved into a global pandemic in 2020 [...].

Why Being 'Stressed' Is 'Desserts' in Reverse-The Effect of Acute Psychosocial Stress on Food Pleasure and Food Choice.

The link between acute stress, food pleasure and eating behavior in humans by employing measures of individual reward mechanisms has not been investigated as of yet. Having these insights is key to understanding why many people experience a change in eating behavior when experiencing stress. Thirty-five Danes (mean age 21.71 years) underwent a stress-inducing and relaxation-inducing task based on a randomized cross-over study design. Both tasks were combined with the Leeds Food Preference Questionnaire, to investigate the effect of stress on specific measures of food reward. Furthermore, participants chose a snack, as a covert measure of actual food choice. The study found no effect on explicit liking, explicit wanting or relative preference. For implicit wanting, an effect was detected on high-fat sweet foods, with increasing scores for the stress-induced condition. Moreover, 54% chose a different snack following the stress-inducing condition. Interestingly, 14% chose to change their snack choice to no snack at all. Results suggest acute psychosocial stress can increase cravings for highly palatable foods for some, while for others an experience of loss of appetite prevails. Overall, this study points to a further understanding of why consumers have issues with making healthy food choices, ultimately affecting public health too.

Novel cadaverine non-invasive biosensor technology for the prediction of shelf life of modified atmosphere packed pork cutlets.

Food waste in perishable products calls for the development of cost-efficient and real-time freshness and shelf life assessment tools. The current study evaluated a newly developed cadaverine biosensor for its ability to assess the sensory freshness stage and microbial quality of modified atmosphere packed (MAP) pork cutlets under a realistic supply chain scenario. The experiment compared the cadaverine levels measured by the biosensor to liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) cadaverine concentrations, and associated these to the shelf life estimation and freshness states determined by sensory and microbial evaluations during an 18-day storage period (5 °C). Results underlined the potential of cadaverine as a freshness biomarker as well as the applicability of the biosensor as a shelf life prediction tool. This is supported by the correlations obtained between sensory odour freshness evaluation and total viable counts with biosensor cadaverine levels for which the r obtained were 0.97 (<0.001) and 0.95 (<0.001), respectively.

"Sound" Decisions: The Combined Role of Ambient Noise and Cognitive Regulation on the Neurophysiology of Food Cravings.

Our ability to evaluate long-term goals over immediate rewards is manifested in the brain's decision circuit. Simplistically, it can be divided into a fast, impulsive, reward "system 1" and a slow, deliberate, control "system 2." In a noisy eating environment, our cognitive resources may get depleted, potentially leading to cognitive overload, emotional arousal, and consequently more rash decisions, such as unhealthy food choices. Here, we investigated the combined impact of cognitive regulation and ambient noise on food cravings through neurophysiological activity. Thirty-seven participants were recruited for an adapted version of the Regulation of Craving (ROC) task. All participants underwent two sessions of the ROC task; once with soft ambient restaurant noise (∼50 dB) and once with loud ambient restaurant noise (∼70 dB), while data from electroencephalography (EEG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and self-reported craving were collected for all palatable food images presented in the task. The results indicated that thinking about future ("later") consequences vs. immediate ("now") sensations associated with the food decreased cravings, which were mediated by frontal EEG alpha power. Likewise, "later" trials also increased frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) -an index for emotional motivation. Furthermore, loud (vs. soft) noise increased alpha, beta, and theta activity, but for theta activity, this was solely occurring during "later" trials. Similarly, EDA signal peak probability was also higher during loud noise. Collectively, our findings suggest that the presence of loud ambient noise in conjunction with prospective thinking can lead to the highest emotional arousal and cognitive load as measured by EDA and EEG, respectively, both of which are important in regulating cravings and decisions. Thus, exploring the combined effects of interoceptive regulation and exteroceptive cues on food-related decision-making could be methodologically advantageous in consumer neuroscience and entail theoretical, commercial, and managerial implications.

Food Pleasure Profiles-An Exploratory Case Study of the Relation between Drivers of Food Pleasure and Lifestyle and Personality Traits in a Danish Consumer Segment.

A greater comprehension of factors contributing to pleasure from food-related experiences could increase understanding of underlying processes around different eating behaviours. We explored drivers of food pleasure and whether certain consumer characteristics were associated with specific food pleasure profiles. This study aimed to investigate (1) how Danish consumers vary in terms of primary drivers of food pleasure, and (2) how differences in food pleasure are related to specific sociodemographic, lifestyle, health and eating behavioural personality traits. Three-hundred and fifty-five respondents (mean age 33.3 years) rated the importance of different drivers of food pleasure, along with sociodemographic, lifestyle, health and eating behaviour variables. Segmentation analysis was performed based on emerging food pleasure dimensions, and profiling of segments was conducted by multivariate regression analysis and calculations of odds ratios. The results demonstrated that five specific consumer segments could be defined, 'Sensory-pleasure Seekers' (50%), 'Internal-pleasure Seekers' (34%), 'Contextual-pleasure Seekers' (17%), 'Exploratory-pleasure seekers' (13%) and 'Confirming-pleasure seekers' (5%), each with specific characteristics. Importantly, this research indicates that a link between mental health, personality, eating behaviour and perceived food pleasure is evident. These insights contribute to the comprehension of the complex nature of food choices of importance to accommodating public health issues.

The sound of silence: Presence and absence of sound affects meal duration and hedonic eating experience.

The interplay between external auditory cues in the eating environment and cognitive processes, such as distraction, may influence food intake, but how and the degree to which they do is unclear. We report an experiment designed to investigate the effects of different sonic atmospheres on meal duration, food intake and evaluations, and responses to the sonic eating environment. In a quasi-naturalistic cafeteria setting, participants (N = 248) were eating a lunch meal whilst being in one of four conditions: slow music, fast music, cafeteria noise, and silence. The results revealed that participants eating their lunch while exposed to some kind of background sound spent more time on their meal than those eating in silence. In terms of music tempo, slow music prolonged meal duration compared to fast music, but did not lead to increased intake. The appropriateness and liking of the sonic atmosphere were positively correlated with the overall pleasantness of the eating experience and liking of the food. The findings provide support for existing evidence documenting the importance of ambient sound in relation to food experiences and provide further insights into how individuals perceive and respond to sonic meal environments. Results are discussed in terms of recommendations for future design of eating environments in different contexts.

The impact of environmental sounds on food reward.

Wanting and liking are both components of food reward, but they manifest in fundamentally different neural substrates. While wanting denotes anticipatory and motivational behaviors, liking is associated with consummatory and hedonic experiences. These distinct constructs have also been quantitatively dissociated in behavioral paradigms. Indeed, internal, physiological, and interoceptive states affect the degree to which the food presented is valued. However, how contextual sensory cues might impact these appetitive and rewarding responses to food remains unexplored. In light of the increasing empirical focus on sound in food research, we investigated the influence of environmental soundscapes on explicit liking, explicit wanting, implicit wanting, choice frequency, and reaction time of healthy/unhealthy food using an online version of the Leeds Food Preference Questionnaire (LFPQ). Soft nature sounds and loud restaurant noises were employed to induce emotional relaxation and arousal respectively. One hundred and one healthy university students completed a repeated-measure design of the LFPQ; once with each soundscape playing in the background. Generalized linear mixed model analyses detected a significant interaction effect between soundscape and food type on choice frequency, yet the post hoc analyses did not reach significance. No interaction effects between soundscape and food type on wanting or liking were discovered. However, hypothesis-driven analyses found that nature sounds increased explicit liking of healthy (vs. unhealthy) foods, while no effect of soundscape on any wanting measures (explicit or implicit) were observed. Finally, exploratory analyses indicated that restaurant noise (vs. nature sound) induced faster response times for both healthy and unhealthy foods. The study exemplifies that in an online setting, contextual auditory manipulation of certain food reward measures and decision processes is feasible.

Think Yourself Slim? Assessing the Satiation Efficacy of Imagined Eating.

Ubiquitous exposure to visual food content has been implicated in the development of obesity with both individual and societal costs. The development and increasing adoption of Extended Reality (XR) experiences, which deliver an unprecedented immersion in digital content, would seem to carry the risk of further exacerbating the consequences of visual food exposure on real-world eating behavior. However, some studies have also identified potentially health-promoting effects of exposure to visual food stimuli. One example is repeated imagined consumption, which has been demonstrated to decrease subsequent food consumption. This work contains the first comparison between imagined eating and actual eating, to investigate how the simulated activity fares against its real counterpart in terms of inducing satiation. Three-hundred participants took part in an experiment at a local food festival. The participants were randomized between three experimental conditions: imagined eating, actual eating, and control. Each condition consisted of thirty trials. Before and after the experimental manipulation, the participants recorded their eating desires and enjoyment of a piece of chocolate candy. The resulting data showed generally no difference between the imagined eating and control conditions, which stands in conflict with the prior literature. In contrast, the differences between imagined and actual eating were significant. These results may be explained by differences in the experimental tasks' dose-response relationships, as well as environmental-contextual disturbances. Overall, the findings do not corroborate the efficacy of imagined eating within a real-life context.

Music Is Served: How Acoustic Interventions in Hospital Dining Environments Can Improve Patient Mealtime Wellbeing.

Eating-related challenges and discomforts arising from moderately acquired brain injuries (ABI)-including physiological and cognitive difficulties-can interfere with patients' eating experience and impede the recovery process. At the same time, external environmental factors have been proven to be influential in our mealtime experience. This experimental pilot study investigates whether redesigning the sonic environment in hospital dining areas can positively influence ABI patients' (n = 17) nutritional state and mealtime experience. Using a three-phase between-subjects interventional design, we investigate the effects of installing sound proofing materials and playing music during the lunch meals at a specialised ABI hospital unit. Comprising both quantitative and qualitative research approaches and data acquisition methods, this project provides multidisciplinary and holistic insights into the importance of attending to sound in hospital surroundings. Our results demonstrate that improved acoustics and music playback during lunch meals might improve the mealtime atmosphere, the patient well-being, and social interaction, which potentially supports patient food intake and nutritional state. The results are discussed in terms of potential future implications for the healthcare sector.

A Conceptual Framework for Multi-Dimensional Measurements of Food Related Pleasure-The Food Pleasure Scale.

In modern times, the majority of food intake is believed to be driven by hedonic processes, rather than homeostatic ones. Various factors have been found to influence the hedonic eating experience and thereby influence eating behaviour, and each factor can be regarded a piece that contributes to parts of the total picture of the hedonic response to food. As a result, the literature on the hedonic response to food-related experiences is comprehensive, but at the same time rather fragmented; and importantly, it is not clear how individuals/segments differ in key drivers of their hedonic experience and the extent to which food pleasure is perceived. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework for the development of a scale (self-report questionnaire) to measure the qualitative and quantitative aspects of food-related pleasure, the Food Pleasure Scale. We introduce the concept of (an)hedonia and scales developed in the past for its measurement, identify the spectrum of characteristics influencing food-related pleasure and explain the relevance of developing such a scale. Based on this theoretical framework, a strategy for the development of the Food Pleasure Scale is proposed.

The temperature of emotions.

Emotions and temperature are closely related through embodied processes, and people seem to associate temperature concepts with emotions. While this relationship is often evidenced by everyday language (e.g., cold and warm feelings), what remains missing to date is a systematic study that holistically analyzes how and why people associate specific temperatures with emotions. The present research aimed to investigate the associations between temperature concepts and emotion adjectives on both explicit and implicit levels. In Experiment 1, we evaluated explicit associations between twelve pairs of emotion adjectives derived from the circumplex model of affect, and five different temperature concepts ranging from 0°C to 40°C, based on responses from 403 native speakers of four different languages (English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese). The results of Experiment 1 revealed that, across languages, the temperatures were associated with different regions of the circumplex model. The 0°C and 10°C were associated with negative-valanced, low-arousal emotions, while 20°C was associated with positive-valanced, low-to-medium-arousal emotions. Moreover, 30°C was associated with positive-valanced, high-arousal emotions; and 40°C was associated with high-arousal and either positive- or negative-valanced emotions. In Experiment 2 (N = 102), we explored whether these temperature-emotion associations were also present at the implicit level, by conducting Implicit Association Tests (IATs) with temperature words (cold and hot) and opposing pairs of emotional adjectives for each dimension of valence (Unhappy/Dissatisfied vs. Happy/Satisfied) and arousal (Passive/Quiet vs. Active/Alert) on native English speakers. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that participants held implicit associations between the word hot and positive-valanced and high-arousal emotions. Additionally, the word cold was associated with negative-valanced and low-arousal emotions. These findings provide evidence for the existence of temperature-emotion associations at both explicit and implicit levels across languages.

Sounds Healthy: Modelling sound-evoked consumer food choice through visual attention.

Food choice is a multifaceted construct that is not solely guided by our internal incentives. In fact, sensory scientist, consumer psychologists, and marketers have demonstrated that external ambient cues, including background music, can influence myriads of subconscious consumer behaviors, effectively leading to increased sales of food and beverages. However, the vast majority of literature in on this topic has thus far been confined to monocultural field studies in which the underlying mechanisms of food choice are unexplored. We therefore studied the explicit and implicit effects of custom-composed soundtracks on food choices and eye-movements in consumers from both 'East' and 'West'. Firstly, based on the results from a pre-study (N = 396), we composed a 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' soundtrack. Subsequently, we recruited 215 participants from China (n = 114) and Denmark (n = 101) respectively for in an in-laboratory eye-tracking food choice paradigm. For each culture, half of the participants listened to the 'healthy' soundtrack and the other half to the 'unhealthy' soundtrack during the experiment. Chi-square tests of independence revealed that across cultures, the healthy (vs. unhealthy) soundtrack led to more healthy food choices. Similarly, the generalized linear mixed models showed that the healthy soundtrack induced more and longer fixations on healthy (vs. unhealthy) food. Finally, a multiple mediation analysis signified a partial mediation effect of sound on food choice through the mediators of fixation duration, fixation count, and revisit count. Our results indicate that, with strategically chosen soundscapes, it is possible to influence consumers' decision-making processes and guide their attention towards healthier foods, providing valuable knowledge for local as well as global food business.