Abstract
To date, there have been no studies that have explicitly examined the effect of awareness on the consumption of food from a Universal Eating Monitor (UEM - hidden balance interfaced to a computer which covertly records eating behaviour). We tested whether awareness of a UEM affected consumption of a pasta lunch and a cookie snack. 39 female participants were randomly assigned to either an aware or unaware condition. After being informed of the presence of the UEM (aware) or not being told about its presence (unaware), participants consumed ad-libitum a pasta lunch from the UEM followed by a cookie snack. Awareness of the UEM did not significantly affect the amount of pasta or cookies eaten. However, awareness significantly reduced the rate of cookie consumption. These results suggest that awareness of being monitored by the UEM has no effect on the consumption of a pasta meal, but does influence the consumption of a cookie snack in the absence of hunger. Hence, energy dense snack foods consumed after a meal may be more susceptible to awareness of monitoring than staple food items.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 247-251 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Appetite |
Volume | 92 |
Early online date | 3 Jun 2015 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2015 |
Bibliographical note
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Keywords
- appetite regulation
- energy intake
- lunch
- psychological models
- nutrition policy
- patient compliance
- portion size
- self-control
- snacks
- randomized controlled trial