The contribution of behavioural science to nutrition: Appetite control

Behaviour and nutrition are inextricably linked. The behaviour of eating is the agency through which nutrients enter the body and exert their effects on physiology, metabolism and health. It is therefore inevitable that the study of eating behaviour (or appetite in general) is essential to an understanding of the discipline of nutrition and therefore to describing the ways in which nutrients can begin to exert their effects. The fact that humans are omnivores, with the potential to eat a huge diversity of foods, clearly denotes the importance of behaviour for nutrition. The roles of culture and biology in determining what foods people put into their mouths highlights the centrality of food choice for nutrition. In turn, behavioural science has made a huge contribution to defining the mechanisms responsible for food choice. This scientific approach has also specified the roles of homoeostatic and hedonic principles (and their interactions) in controlling the amount and type of food (nutrition) ingested. A substantial focus has been the investigation of the processes of satiation and satiety, with implications for understanding routes to over-consumption and obesity. All of these investigations have been incorporated within a generally accepted and well-described behavioural science methodology that involves the application of objective scientific principles to the study of eating behaviour. This methodology has been heavily implicated in the search for commercially viable functional foods for satiety. In recent years, behavioural science has engaged with the fields of energy balance and physical activity, recognising that nutrient intake is not independent of nutrient utilisation. This approach has been fostered by the pervasive problem of obesity and by its dependence on the interaction between over nutrition and under activity. The diversity of foods in the omnivore's repertoire is matched only by the diversity of humans themselves. This diversity is reality, and a future track for behavioural science seems destined to lead to understanding and managing individual differences.