No effect of focused attention whilst eating on later snack food intake: Two laboratory experiments
Whitelock and colleagues attempted to replicate a finding that had become standard advice, that paying close attention to a meal while eating it reduces how much you eat later. Two experiments, with more than two hundred and fifty participants between them, had people eat a fixed lunch either while listening to instructions directing attention to the taste and texture of the food or in one of two control conditions, then measured how much snack food they ate three hours later and how well they remembered the lunch. Neither experiment found any effect on later eating. The second study also tested whether a satisfying or unsatisfying lunch changed the result, and it did not. Nor did focused attention improve memory for the meal, which was the proposed mechanism. The authors are measured about it, noting that attention may still matter under conditions their studies did not create. This vault cites it against confident claims for mindful eating.
Whitelock and colleagues attempted to replicate a finding that had become standard advice, that paying close attention to a meal while eating it reduces how much you eat later. Two experiments, with more than two hundred and fifty participants between them, had people eat a fixed lunch either while listening to instructions directing attention to the taste and texture of the food or in one of two control conditions, then measured how much snack food they ate three hours later and how well they remembered the lunch. Neither experiment found any effect on later eating. The second study also tested whether a satisfying or unsatisfying lunch changed the result, and it did not. Nor did focused attention improve memory for the meal, which was the proposed mechanism. The authors are measured about it, noting that attention may still matter under conditions their studies did not create. This vault cites it against confident claims for mindful eating.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Robinson, E., Hardman, C. A., Halford, J. C. G. & Jones, A. (2018). "No effect of focused attention whilst eating on later snack food intake: two laboratory experiments." Appetite, 128, 188-196. Null.
Where we use it
- Why You Are Hungry an Hour After a Big Lunch, Why We Crave
Reliability of this reference
The link below is the right work, with one detail that does not line up. Title, venue, year and volume match, but the first author is Whitelock, V.; Robinson, E. is the last author. The author list also includes Brunstrom, omitted from the supplied citation. Worth opening before quoting a figure from it.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2018.06.002
DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2018.06.002