Make up your mind about food: A healthy mindset attenuates attention for high-calorie food in restrained eaters

Abstract

Attention bias for food could be a cognitive pathway to overeating in obesity and restrained eating. Yet, empirical evidence for individual differences (e.g., in restrained eating and body mass index) in attention bias for food is mixed. We tested experimentally if temporarily induced health versus palatability mindsets influenced attention bias for food, and whether restrained eating moderated this relation. After manipulating mindset (health vs. palatability) experimentally, food-related attention bias was measured by eye-movements (EM) and response latencies (RL) during a visual probe task depicting high-calorie food and non-food. Restrained eating was assessed afterwards. A significant interaction of mindset and restrained eating on RL bias emerged, β = 0.36, t(58) = 2.05, p = 0.045: A health mindset - as compared to a palatability mindset - attenuated attention bias for high-caloric food only in participants with higher eating restraint. No effects were observed on EM biases. The current results demonstrate that state differences in health versus palatability mindsets can cause attenuated attention bias for high-calorie food cues in participants with higher eating restraint. Our findings add to emerging evidence that state differences in mindsets can bias attention for food, above the influence of trait differences.

Interactions between metabolic, reward and cognitive processes in appetite control: Implications for novel weight management therapies

“…reaching for a tempting food ( Anderson, 2017 ; Krebs et al, 2010 ). Another possibility is that selective attention to sensory/hedonic attributes of food biases choice towards food consumption because these attributes of food are weighed more strongly than longer-term goals in reward valuation processes ( Werthmann et al, 2016 ).…”

Lost in Translation? On the Need for Convergence in Animal and Human Studies on the Role of Dopamine in Diet-Induced Obesity

“…Furthermore, glucose intake enhanced attentional food bias in obesity [41] and intra-individual variability in a similar bias measure was stronger in obesity [64], supporting the dynamic nature of attentional bias [164•]. Food attentional bias can be attenuated by cognitive factors such as a healthy mindset [87], which emphasises the importance of cross-talk between the frontostriatal loops. Regulation of craving has been associated with differential activation in the putamen and functional connectivity between the putamen and dlPFC [50], also spanning the loops.…”

Food-Related Attentional Bias in Individuals with Normal Weight and Overweight: A Study with a Flicker Task

“…These studies have shown that both restrained [16] and external eaters (individuals who eat in response to external food cues) [11,18,19] respond faster to a range of hypercaloric food stimuli relative to neutral (non-food) stimuli. On the other hand, of relevance for the present study, research on attention processes in participants with overweight and obesity is relatively sparse, and it yielded contradictory results [20].…”