Food Pleasure Research Articles

Rebellious eating: older women misbehaving through indulgence

Purpose Food rituals are an ever present part of consumers’ lives that have practical implications for well-being. This paper aims to explore how food and its relationship to pleasure evolve, as women navigate social norms around gender and aging. Design/methodology/approach Ethnographic data were collected using in-depth interviews and participant observations of members of the Red Hat Society (RHS) across 27 months. This approach provided a more nuanced perspective on how food experiences shape consumption rituals and communal ties over time. Findings Older women in the RHS eat rebelliously when they break social norms of gender and aging by indulging together in food and drink. Their rituals of rebellious eating have implications on well-being, heightening their experiential pleasure of food and conviviality and forging social support and a sense of community. The dark side of personal indulgence is explored within a larger framework of food well-being. Originality/value This study shows how older women challenge social expectations around age and gender through food pleasure rituals. The concept of rebellious eating is introduced to conceptualize how these older women rethink aging and indulgence within a supportive community of consumption and integrate the concepts into their personal narratives.

Consuming well-being and happiness through epicurean ingestion

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the idea of eating for pleasure and its effect on consumer well-being. It begins by introducing the concept of food well-being (FWB) under the transformative consumer research (TCR) agenda. Subsequently, it provides detailed discussions on the concept of pleasure, under which food practices involving epicurean pleasure and hedonic and eudaimonic consumption will be discussed.Design/methodology/approachThis paper takes a different approach to the usual qualitative methodologies by using the introspective analysis of the filmEat, Pray, Lovewhere the consumption of food for pleasure was heavily practiced.FindingsThis paper presents the introspective voice of the lead author’s food consumption. It reveals a food consumption practice which followed an initial loss of taste, to alternative food consumption (AFC) and finally slow food ingestion. The journey of her epicurean ingestion revealed pleasurable experiences that reflected a positive subjective well-being (SWB). This attitude of ingesting food and living for the moment propelled the idea that food well-being is more about consumer happiness.Originality/valueThis paper is novel in its approach to use film introspection to probe the concept of FWB within TCR. Additionally, it reveals the transitioning moment of AFC that leads to pleasurable experience. It also reveals that a personal investment in cooking for self restores taste and improves SWB. Overall, it showcases how the appreciation of the sensations of food from its taste, as it was ingested gradually, leads to the total experiential feeling embedded in food consumption.

P78 Lifestyle Medicine Intervention: Curbing Depression by Creating Food Pleasure

Background Lifestyle Medicine encompasses the adoption and maintenance of attitudes and behaviors that affect health and quality of life through diet and physical activity. Lack of motivation to eat healthier and be active is an issue commonly seen in our contemporary society. Objective This was a secondary data analysis of an interdisciplinary and evidence-based Lifestyle Medicine program to promote the adoption and sustainability of positive attitudes and behaviors towards nutrition. Study Design, Settings, and Participants Previously collected, de-identified data was obtained from a western Colorado hospital. This was an 18-week in-person program delivered by a multidisciplinary team of healthcare providers (MD, RDN, PT) that integrated nutrition education, cooking classes, and physical activity sessions to stimulate attitude and behavior change. The initiative aimed to improve employees' (n = 113) mental health and physical well-being by means of nutrition education. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Validated Patient Heath Questionnaires (PHQ-9) were taken pre- and post-program to determine changes in health mindset. Questionnaires were analyzed using paired t-tests and descriptive statistics. Results Scores from the PHQ-9 showed a significant decrease in mean scores (-3.32, P Conclusion Implementation of a comprehensive Lifestyle Medicine program by an interdisciplinary team may assist in reducing the severity and prevalence of a negative health mindset. Future research needs to be conducted to establish the impact of Lifestyle Medicine interventions in reducing an unhealthy way of thinking and stimulating food pleasure. Funding None.

Treats are a tool of the trade: an exploration of food treats among grandparents who provide informal childcare.

Globally, grandparents are the main informal childcare providers with one-quarter of children aged ≤5 years regularly cared for by grandparents in Australia, the UK and USA. Research is conflicting; many studies claim grandparents provide excessive amounts of discretionary foods (e.g. high in fat/sugar/sodium) while others suggest grandparents can positively influence children's diet behaviours. The present study aimed to explore the meaning and role of food treats among grandparents who provide regular informal care of young grandchildren. Qualitative methodology utilising a grounded theory approach. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and focus groups, then thematically analysed. Participants were recruited through libraries, churches and playgroups in South Australia. Grandparents (n 12) caring for grandchild/ren aged 1-5 years for 10 h/week or more. Three themes emerged: (i) the functional role of treats (e.g. to reward good behaviour); (ii) grandparent role, responsibility and identity (e.g. the belief that grandparent and parent roles differ); and (iii) the rules regarding food treats (e.g. negotiating differences between own and parental rules). Grandparents favoured core-food over discretionary-food treats. They considered the risks (e.g. dental caries) and rewards (e.g. pleasure) of food treats and balanced their wishes with those of their grandchildren and parents. Food treats play an important role in the grandparent-grandchild relationship and are used judiciously by grandparents to differentiate their identity and relationship from parents and other family members. This research offers an alternative narrative to the dominant discourse regarding grandparents spoiling grandchildren with excessive amounts of discretionary foods.

The role of attentional biases to appetitive stimuli in childhood overweight

Overweight during childhood constitutes a high-risk factor for adult obesity. An abnormal attention to food stimuli (i.e., a bias) has been suggested as an underlying mechanism to the onset and/or maintenance of obesity. Previous literature supports the existence of a biased attention toward food stimuli in adults with obesity. However, it is unknown whether this attentional bias occurs in high-risk children for adult obesity. We aimed to examine attentional biases to food at different stages of attention processing in overweight children. A dot-probe task was applied to 25 children with overweight and 25 healthy-weight children (8–12 years old). Attentional preference to or avoidance of pleasant food stimuli, which were displayed simultaneously with pleasant non-food stimuli (matched in valence and arousal), was examined at 100-ms (initial visual orienting), 500-ms (attention engagement), and 1500-ms (maintained attention) presentation rates. Both children with overweight and healthy-weight children showed an attentional bias toward food images at a 100-ms presentation rate. However, unlike healthy-weight children, those with overweight showed an attentional preference toward food images at 500- and 1500-ms presentation rates. A biased initial orienting to food cues can be found regardless of weight. However, a biased attention engagement and a biased maintained attention toward food cues are characteristics of children with overweight. Therefore, as in adults, children at risk of adult obesity have an abnormal attentional processing of food stimuli.

Study of Consumer Acceptance by Means of Questionnaire Survey Towards Newly Developed Yogurts with Functional Ingredients

Background: Presently, consumers are becoming very much aware of the benefits of allying the concepts of pleasant food with health promoting properties. Hence, the market for healthier foods, functional foods or even nutraceuticals has risen in the past decades. Objective: This work was designed to assess the consumers’ possible acceptance of newly developed yogurts with functional ingredients. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken on a non-probabilistic sample of 347 participants. The data were collected from October to December 2015 in the Central Region of Portugal. The questionnaires were applied by direct interview after verbally informed consent only to participants aged 18 or over. Results: The results obtained showed that more than 90% of the participants liked yogurts and consumed yogurts regularly (∼73%), either in the solid or liquid forms. The participants consumed functional yogurts, specifically for regulation of intestinal transit (∼46%) and for weight control (∼44%). When asked about the new yogurts with functional and detox properties, the participants indicated that they might be potential consumers of yogurts with the ability to eliminate toxins from the body (∼69%). In spite of recognizing the importance of adding ingredients with certain functionalities, like parsley, watercress or celery, the consumers manifested some doubts that those ingredients might combine well in yogurts. A regression model was deduced relating the possible consumption of detox yogurts with some behavioural aspects like physical exercise, consumption of functional foods and detox products. Conclusion: This work showed that selling yogurts with detox properties might be a good strategy because there might be a market for that type of product. However, without trying the samples and verifying the real taste of the products, the possible consumers have some doubts about the incorporation of certain ingredients, even though recognizing their roles as important.

The Food Network’s Heartland Kitchens: Cooking up neoconservative comfort in the United States

Since 2010, the Food Network has introduced a series of female-hosted, daytime shows that emphasise conservative regions of the United States and glamorise traditional gender roles. I discuss the shared characteristics of such shows and explain how this kitchen-centred neoconservatism emanates from a culture of national anxiety, as well as the parallel shifts to traditionalism incited by foodie culture, post-feminism and neo-liberalism. I contend that the ways in which home cooking is presented on these shows may work to conflate the pleasures of food with the pleasures of gendered and racial neoconservatism in the United States.

The Life of Benjamin Rush Reflects Troubled Age in U.S. Medical History

The Life of Benjamin Rush Reflects Troubled Age in U.S. Medical History

Practicing the (un)healthy = tasty intuition: Toward an ecological view of the relationship between health and taste in consumer judgments

Recent research has provided some first indications that not all consumers apply an unhealthy = more tasty heuristic when judging the healthiness and tastiness of food products. To address the question of whether and when consumers perceive food in accordance with unhealthy = tasty or healthy = tasty views, we conducted two studies in two European countries with consumers who were stratified along important demographic characteristics. In both studies, we presented participants with a random sample of real food products from two product categories available at a large supermarket chain. We hypothesized a positive relationship between subjective healthiness and tastiness judgments, which we assume has its bases in an evolutionary mechanism, personal consumption experiences and consumption trends. Our results consistently revealed the expected positive association between subjective healthiness and tastiness judgments across participants, countries, and products. However, the magnitude and valence of this relationship varied across product categories and depended on differences in the extents to which consumers believed in the unhealthy = tasty intuition, were interested in health, and exhibited a food pleasure orientation.

The experiential pleasure of food: A savoring journey to food well-being

This paper introduces experiential pleasure of food (EPF) as a journey that involves the enduring cognitive and emotional pleasure consumers gain from savoring the multisensory, communal, and cultural meanings of food experiences. Specifically, our paper extends work by Cornil and Chandon (2016a and 2016b) on epicurean eating pleasure (EEP) and identifies and defines three stages (contemplation, connection, and creation) and its determinants as they lead to consumers' food well-being (Block et al., 2011). EPF (vs. EEP) aims to promote enduring (vs. improved) consumer well-being and explores marketing and public policy implications and future research areas that might help achieve food well-being (FWB) (Block et al., 2011). EPF offers a clear path to connect pleasure and EEP with FWB. Specifically, our conceptualization of EPF will serve scholars, public policymakers, and marketers who are interested in understanding enduring healthy eating through the perspective of food as pleasure rather than as a health deterrent.

The importance of the visual aesthetics of colours in food at a workday lunch

The aim of the present study was to explore the colour-related aesthetic pleasure in food at workday lunches. First, we conducted a survey (n = 188) to define how interested people are in the visual aesthetics of food and plating. Secondly, an additional questionnaire (n = 105) and a qualitative interview study (n = 12) were conducted to investigate the aesthetic pleasure in food in more detail and its meaning to consumers at a workday lunch. The results of the survey demonstrated that people were interested in the visual aesthetics of food and plating, and this level of interest was dependent upon gender, women being more interested than men. The questionnaire about choice between differently coloured lunch portions (image-processed pictures) showed that the most preferred lunch portions were colourful and had a wide range of colours. In the interview study, aesthetics and colours were considered important, but were not the primary argument for food choices at lunch.The determinants of aesthetic pleasure in lunch food were found to be fluency, pleasantness, functionality and tidiness. At lunch, people liked colourful food with colour contrasts and bright colours, natural and simple colours and colours typical for the foodstuff. Food should not be monotonous; a variety and diversity of colours was preferred. The colours in lunch food are typically the colours of vegetables; therefore, an increase in the number of colours means more vegetables and consequently a healthier diet. At the practical level, the results of this study can be used by restaurants and canteens for composing an aesthetic and visually attractive workday lunch.

EmojiGrid: A 2D Pictorial Scale for the Assessment of Food Elicited Emotions.

Research on food experience is typically challenged by the way questions are worded. We therefore developed the EmojiGrid: a graphical (language-independent) intuitive self-report tool to measure food-related valence and arousal. In a first experiment participants rated the valence and the arousing quality of 60 food images, using either the EmojiGrid or two independent visual analog scales (VAS). The valence ratings obtained with both tools strongly agree. However, the arousal ratings only agree for pleasant food items, but not for unpleasant ones. Furthermore, the results obtained with the EmojiGrid show the typical universal U-shaped relation between the mean valence and arousal that is commonly observed for a wide range of (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory) affective stimuli, while the VAS tool yields a positive linear association between valence and arousal. We hypothesized that this disagreement reflects a lack of proper understanding of the arousal concept in the VAS condition. In a second experiment we attempted to clarify the arousal concept by asking participants to rate the valence and intensity of the taste associated with the perceived food items. After this adjustment the VAS and EmojiGrid yielded similar valence and arousal ratings (both showing the universal U-shaped relation between the valence and arousal). A comparison with the results from the first experiment showed that VAS arousal ratings strongly depended on the actual wording used, while EmojiGrid ratings were not affected by the framing of the associated question. This suggests that the EmojiGrid is largely self-explaining and intuitive. To test this hypothesis, we performed a third experiment in which participants rated food images using the EmojiGrid without an associated question, and we compared the results to those of the first two experiments. The EmojiGrid ratings obtained in all three experiments closely agree. We conclude that the EmojiGrid appears to be a valid and intuitive affective self-report tool that does not rely on written instructions and that can efficiently be used to measure food-related emotions.

Activity of frontal pole cortex reflecting hedonic tone of food and drink: fNIRS study in humans

Cognitive and hedonic aspects of taste have been studied using different neuroimaging techniques in humans. However, the methods used are unsuitable for easy monitoring of hedonics induced by intake of foods and beverages. Here we have tried to monitor changes in oxygenated hemoglobin (oxyHb) levels in the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC, frontopolar cortex, Brodmann area 10) in response to intake of hedonically different edibles in healthy adults. When subjects tasted sweet and bitter solutions freely without any particular instruction, cortical activation varied greatly among subjects and between the two stimuli, and no consistent results were obtained. Subjects then ate or drank preferred (hedonically positive) and disliked (hedonically negative) edibles. Although these stimuli differed among subjects, hedonically positive stimuli decreased oxyHb, whereas hedonically negative stimuli increased oxyHb, particularly in the ventral aPFC. When subjects tasted 4 kinds of jellies with different flavors and evaluated the degree of pleasantness, oxyHb level in the ventral region correlated negatively with pleasantness score. These results revealed that pleasant and unpleasant edibles tended to elicit decreased and increased oxyHb levels, respectively, within the ventral aPFC, suggesting that monitoring of oxyHb in this region may prove useful for objective evaluation of pleasantness of food and drink.

Effect of exposure to similar flavours in sensory specific satiety: Implications for eating behaviour

Sensory-specific satiety (SSS) refers to a decline in pleasantness of eaten foods in comparison to other non-ingested meals. Although SSS is specific to the eaten food, it can also generalize to other meals that share similar properties to the satiated food. It is possible that this phenomenon could become more specific after extensive experience, as repeated exposure to an assortment of similar food could cause perceptual learning (i.e. an increase in the distinctiveness of each specific item). This in turn would reduce generalization from the consumed food to other similar products, so they will be more readily consumed. To assess this hypothesis, two experiments were carried out using rats as experimental subjects and flavoured solutions as stimuli. In Experiment 1 our main goal was to find the basic SSS effect with two different solutions. As expected, the results showed that rats tended to consume a higher amount of non-sated solutions in comparison to sated ones. Experiment 2 evaluated how repeated exposure to two similar solutions affected generalization of the SSS. Results showed that rats that did not have extensive exposure to the flavoured solutions showed no preference for the non-sated drink. However, rats that had repeated exposure to the flavours showed SSS. The results suggest that easy and continuous access to a high variety of similar unhealthy foods might have long-term effects on food consumption, and highlight a potential mechanism linking obesogenic environments with dietary habits.

Gourmet Travel: Culinary Television Representations of Food-Inspired Touring

This article examines one of the earliest forms of culinary television, the food/travel program. The vicarious travel opportunities such programs offer are explored to reveal the lifestyle aspirations of contemporary audiences. Food is an essential part of any culture and often relatively accessible, and therefore an easy way to experience other places and lives, however vicariously. In the close study of two contemporary Australian television programs, Food Safari and Luke Nguyen's Vietnam, this article examines media representations of cultures and cuisines, and constructions of otherness. The pivotal role the hosts of current food television play in the promotion of consumption is also explored. It finds that in combining the pleasures of food and travel, culinary programs provide a risk-free way of exploring foreignness, both locally and globally. Ideas of authenticity are key to these explorations. However, culinary television depictions of cultures and cuisines are complex and, at times, problematic in encouraging understanding primarily through consumption.

S127. Systemic Inflammation is Associated With Stronger Coupling Between Striatum Activity and Food Pleasantness Ratings in Depression With Appetite Loss

S127. Systemic Inflammation is Associated With Stronger Coupling Between Striatum Activity and Food Pleasantness Ratings in Depression With Appetite Loss

Between the Boundaries of Turkish Delight, Butterbeer, and Waffles: Reading Food Metaphors in Children’s Literature

The purpose of this study is to analyze food metaphors in Children’s literature: a metaphor of punishment in Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a metaphor of pleasure in Rowling’s Harry Potter books and a metaphor of healing in Hovarth’s Everything on a Waffle. Food has been used to teach proper knowledge and lessons to children (readers) by adults (authors). Within those thoughts, children should be passive and obedient objects erasing their own voices. In fairy tales, one of the main themes is how to survive through harsh situation and severe starvation. Food and eating manners are suitable to deliver the moral messages to children. Edmund, tempted by White Witch’s Turkish Delight, doesn’t remember the polite manners when he eats, and becomes a traitor to get more Turkish Delight. His greedy desire toward Turkish Delight is punished by the hunger and the crisis to be a victim. Harry, always hungry and isolated in Dursley’s house, realizes the pleasure of food after eating and sharing fantastic sweets and food in Hogwarts. Food in Harry Potter books doesn’t connotate any morals or lessons that children might know. Primrose, who suffers from her parents’ absence, strongly believes that they are alive and come back someday. To fill the absence, she tries to fill up ‘the blank pages’ in mom’s note pad with recipes. Writing recipes can be a way of healing to fill up ‘the blank pages’ in her life.

Buried Food-seeking Test for the Assessment of Olfactory Detection in Mice.

The sense of smell allows animals to discriminate a large number of volatile environmental chemicals. Such chemical signaling modulates the behavior of several species that depend on odorant compounds to locate food, recognize territory, predators, and toxic compounds. Olfaction also plays a role in mate choice, mother-infant recognition, and social interaction among members of a group. A key assay to assess the ability to smell odorants is the buried food-seeking test, which checks whether the food-deprived mice can find the food pellet hidden beneath the bedding in the animal's cage. The main parameter observed in this test is the latency to uncover a small piece of chow, cookie, or other pleasant food, hidden beneath a layer of cage bedding, within a limited amount of time. It is understood that food-restricted mice which fail to use odor cues to locate food within a given time period are likely to have deficits in olfactory abilities. Investigators who used the buried food test, or versions of the buried food test, demonstrated that it is possible to evaluate olfactory deficits in different models of murine studies (Alberts and Galef, 1971; Belluscio et al., 1998 ; Luo et al., 2002 ; Li et al., 2013 ). We have recently used this assay to demonstrate that olfactory-specific Ric-8B knock-out mice (a guanine nucleotide exchange factor that interacts with olfactory-specific G-protein) show an impaired sense of smell ( Machado et al., 2017 ). Here we describe the protocol of the buried food-seeking test, as adopted in our assays.

From groups to grits: Social identity shapes evaluations of food pleasantness

Throughout human history, food consumption has been deeply tied to cultural groups. Past models of food preference have assumed that social concerns are dissociated from basic appetitive qualities—such as tastiness—in food choice. In contrast to this notion, we tested and found support for the novel idea that social identities can shape the evaluation of food pleasantness. Specifically, individual differences in social identification (Study 1) as well as experimentally manipulated identity salience (Study 2) were associated with the anticipated tastiness of identity-relevant foods. We also found that identity salience influenced perceived food pleasantness during consumption (Study 3). These results suggest social identity may shape evaluations of food pleasantness, both through long-term motivational components of identification as well as short-term identity salience. Thus, the influence of social identity on cognition appears to extend beyond social evaluation, to hedonic experience. We discuss implications for theories of identity, decision-making, and food consumption.

Food-Based Dietary Guidelines: a comparative analysis between the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population 2006 and 2014 - CORRIGENDUM.

Objective In 2014, the Brazilian Ministry of Health launched the second edition of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population (DGBP), which deploys the new food classification NOVA. It esteems that the second DGBP overcomes the limitations in the previous food guide, reformulating the diet concepts, food pattern, culture and system. The present paper analyses the advances and limits established in the second edition, contrasting with its first edition. Design The study employs a discourse analysis. The corpus was established through four stages: (i) floating reading of the empirical materials; (ii) deepening readings; (iii) selected discursive sequences; and (iv) organization of the discursive sequences into a matrix for analysis. The data analysis used three steps: (i) identification of similar texts in external materials; (ii) elucidation of linguistic effect through deepening readings of the external materials; and (iii) systematic analysis to identify sequences that expressed equivalence or disparities. Setting Brazil. Subjects DGBP 2006 and 2014. Results Adoption of the NOVA food classification, based on food processing level, enabled the development of dietary guidelines that consider the limitations of the nutritional discourse and may incorporate the sociocultural and social-environmental discourses, evoking pleasure in food, diversity of feeding habits and stimulating culinary practices as promoters of healthy eating practices. Conclusions The second DGBP enables a new way of thinking about meals and foods, on the strengthening of socio-cultural dimensions of feeding, and on addressing food and nutritional guidelines on culinary practices, eating and edibility.