Whitelock, Victoria and Robinson, Eric
(2018).
Remembered meal satisfaction and later snack food intake: A laboratory study 2016-2018.
[Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex:
UK Data Service.
10.5255/UKDA-SN-853370
Obesity is now a major biosocial issue that affects most of the developed world. Rises in obesity have been caused primarily by increases in the amount of food people have been eating. However, the long-term reductions to food consumption which are required to promote weight loss are difficult to achieve for most people on their own. Recent work has shown that memory for recent eating experiences is an important determinant of eating behaviour; by having an accurate memory representation of what we have been eating throughout the day, we can make better decisions about how much to eat. This raises the possibility of developing intervention tools that target memory for recent eating in order to help people eat more healthily. In line with this, initial results suggest that encouraging individuals to eat in a more 'attentive' manner, by ensuring attention is paid towards meals being eaten, improves memory for recent eating and reduces the amount of food people tend to eat. These finding are promising as even modest reductions to food consumption can promote weight loss and therefore have positive effects on health and well-being.
Although it has been suggested that memory informs food consumption, how this process occurs is unclear. If we are able to understand how 'attentive' eating reduces food consumption, this may have public health benefit. Thus, a thorough investigation of how memory influences eating behaviour is now required. Memory for recent eating consists of multiple episodic 'elements', such as visual memory for meal size and memory for how filling a meal is remembered to have been. Understanding which episodic 'elements' determine how much food we consume and explain why eating attentively reduces food consumption will provide us with novel theoretical information. This in turn will also enable us to design effective intervention tools to target memory for recent eating, so we can help overweight individuals eat less and lose weight, which will be of wider public health benefit.
This research will be the first to develop a theoretical account of how memory for recent eating influences eating behaviour and the process by which an 'attentive' eating style reduces food consumption. This new knowledge will then guide a translational 'real world' intervention study; taking the findings from initial promising laboratory studies and using cross-disciplinary methods to test whether 'attentive eating' principles can be applied in a public health intervention setting to help overweight people eat less and lose weight.
The present project will address an important biosocial question and benefit from cross-disciplinary research methods. By the end of the research we will have developed a better understanding of how memory for recent eating influences food consumption and examined the applied relevance of this new knowledge. These novel insights will have the potential to help tackle the widespread obesity problem faced by the majority of the developed world.
Data description (abstract)
The data in this file were collected from an experimental study that aimed to examine whether remembered meal satisfaction can be manipulated in a laboratory setting and whether this influences later food intake.
Studies 1 and 2 use laboratory feeding methods to manipulate and interfere with memories for recent eating, in order to test and understand the influence that different memory elements have on food consumption. Study 3 tests whether targeting memory for recent eating and promoting a more 'attentive' approach to eating through the use of smartphone technology can help overweight and obese individuals eat less and lose weight.
Data creators: |
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Contributors: |
Name |
Affiliation |
ORCID (as URL) |
Paumen Theresa |
University of Liverpool |
|
Szalaty Marta |
University of Liverpool |
|
Heppenstall Karla |
University of Liverpool |
|
|
Sponsors: |
Economic and Social Research Council
|
Grant reference: |
ES/N00034X/1
|
Topic classification: |
Health Psychology
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Keywords: |
psychology, memory, food and nutrition
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Project title: |
Eating Attentively: Episodic Memory & Eating Behaviour
|
Grant holders: |
Eric Robinson
|
Project dates: |
From | To |
---|
1 April 2016 | 30 September 2018 |
|
Date published: |
15 Oct 2018 14:19
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Last modified: |
31 Oct 2018 12:28
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Collection period: |
Date from: | Date to: |
---|
4 August 2017 | 8 December 2017 |
|
Country: |
United Kingdom |
Data collection method: |
The data in this collection relate to an experimental laboratory study. Participants were recruited via advertisements in the local area and on the university campus. |
Observation unit: |
Individual |
Kind of data: |
Numeric, Text |
Type of data: |
Experimental data
|
Resource language: |
English |
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Data sourcing, processing and preparation: |
The data is anonymised. The rehearsal task responses for the control group are not in the data file due to the potentially identifying nature of the responses. For more information, please use the contact information provided.
|
Rights owners: |
|
Contact: |
Name | Email | Affiliation | ORCID (as URL) |
---|
Robinson, Eric | e.robinson@liverpool.ac.uk | University of Liverpool | Unspecified | Whitelock, Victoria | v.whitelock@liverpool.ac.uk | University of Liverpool | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8604-4490 |
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Notes on access: |
The Data Collection is available to any user without the requirement for registration for download/access.
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Publisher: |
UK Data Service
|
Last modified: |
31 Oct 2018 12:28
|
|
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