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Between odours and overeating: Behavioural and neurobiological mechanisms of olfactory food-cue reactivity
With the aim of better understanding the role of odors in overeating, Zoon (2017) found that smelling food odors increases appetite for foods similar in taste and energy density to that odor, and decreases the liking and desire for these congruent foods. This article also reveals that following high energy/sweet food consumption, early neural processing of pictures of the same foods changed significantly. Conversely, smelling odors signalling high-energy food, low-energy food, and non-foods did not lead to alterations in food preferences or intakes. But the researchers learnt that patients who undergo Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass (RYGB) weight-loss surgery start to prefer low-fat/low-sugar foods rather than their previously preferred diet of high-fat/high-sugar foods. In addition, differences in prefrontal neural responses were seen in post-surgery patients, indicating inhibition of response to pictures of high-energy foods. These findings suggest that RYGB weight-loss surgery results in cognitive modifications (control of attention, neural inhibition over behavioral responses). It is therefore concluded that odors have an appetizing function in the anticipatory phase of eating, which implicates orthonasal odors in guiding people’s food decisions towards a healthier eating pattern. [NPID: perception, food odor, overeating, prefrontal neural responses, cognition, control of attention, attention, neural inhibition, behavioral response, anticipation, food decisions]
Year: 2017
