A surgical procedure involves removing all or a part of the vagus nerve that innervates the stomach, interrupting the nerve’s signal transmission (Rabben et al., 2016).

The vagus nerve is the 10th cranial nerve, one of the longest and most complex. It originates in the brainstem and travels to the neck, thorax, and abdomen, connecting the brain to the rest of the body’s organs. It regulates blood flow, heart rate, reflex actions, breathing, digestion, and other essential processes in the body via the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The vagus nerve is a direct physical connection between the gut and the brain (Breit et al., 2018).

The short-lived hedonic relief created by the satisfaction of eating impulses. Visceral eating pleasure is the by-product of relieving a visceral urge, often beyond the eaters’ volitional control. It can be summarized by its valence (pleasant or unpleasant), regardless of the rich aesthetic experience of eating (Cornil & Chandon, 2016).

A measurement scale (i.e., a validated questionnaire) is used within the fields of psychology and nutrition to measure one’s subjective experience or attitude to a stimulus by indicating one’s level of agreement to a statement by selecting a position along a continuous line between two end-points. The VAS has been used in nutrition research to measure ingestive behavior, pre- and postprandial hunger, fullness, desire to eat, and prospective food consumption (PFC) (Douglass & Leidy, 2019).

The physiological and neurophysiological changes involving “visual hunger” experienced in an organism in response to increased exposure to images of desirable food (Spence et al., 2016).