Food Choice Based on Logue Ch. 5 & 6

Food choices significantly affect health, impacting obesity rates, cancer risk, and heart disease.

Obesity and overweight rates in Australia are increasing, with significant implications for public health.

Over 40% of adults in Australia are currently overweight or obese.

Avoiding processed meats and saturated fats can help prevent colon cancer and heart disease.

Understanding how people's food preferences can be changed to encourage healthy choices.

Diet-related diseases in Australia cost the government billions of dollars annually.

Understanding food preferences is crucial for creating and improving food products, and for increasing sales.

The Australian food industry is a large and profitable sector, with significant economic value.

Genetic predispositions influence food preferences, although environmental factors also play a role.

Genetic and environmental factors often interact to shape food preferences.

The preference for sweet foods is largely genetically determined in most animals, including humans, except certain carnivores.

Parental influence can moderate an individual's sensitivity to bitter tastes.

Our ability to learn from our and others' food experiences is a significant genetic predisposition.

Most excess salt consumption comes from processed foods due to its use as a bulking agent, preservative, and flavor enhancer.

Individuals carrying one copy of the cystic fibrosis gene excrete less salt, potentially offering a survival advantage in situations like diarrhea.

Infants show disgust reactions to bitter tastes, similar to animals and those with brain damage, suggesting an inborn aversion.

Salt is used in processed foods as a bulking agent, preservative, and flavoring agent.

The liking for sweet tastes, a seemingly innate preference in humans and many animals.

Our liking of a food can be affected by how it is presented or associated with other experiences, as demonstrated in experiments with children and other populations.

Special receptors on the tongue that detect sweet tastes and send signals to the brain.

A nerve that carries signals from taste buds to the brain.

Parts of the brain, like the periaqueductal grey and nucleus accumbens, associated with pleasurable sensations and reward.

Substances naturally produced by the body that have pain-relieving and pleasurable effects, related to sweet taste.

A condition where the body has difficulty processing fructose.

Studies of twins (monozygotic and dizygotic) show a strong similarity in sweetness preferences, implying a genetic component and significant influence of relatedness.

The concept that animals' sweet liking preference can be altered through selective breeding, pointing towards a genetic component.

Individuals with an increased sensitivity to taste, often associated with a reduced liking for sweet.

Salt is crucial for bodily functions and survival, and people will go to great lengths to obtain it.

The potentially fatal consequences of not having enough salt in the body.

Humans naturally tend to reject bitter foods, likely as a protective mechanism against poisonous substances.

These are toxic compounds often found in potatoes, affecting the taste preference of some groups.

Exposure early in life can affect our taste preferences, even if initial preference was genetically determined.

These groups have different tolerance levels for bitter flavors than others likely due to dietary requirements.

Milk consumption is common in infants, due to its sweetness(lactose) making it easily accepted.

Many animals and humans stop consuming milk after infancy therefore not all human groups can consume milk past infancy.

The enzyme lactase, required for milk digestion, is usually lost by age 2-3 in many humans

Some groups, like Northern Europeans, retain the ability to digest milk throughout life.

Studies on dietary self-selection can be flawed if participants must choose from poor-quality foods.

Animals, like rats, may select thiamine-rich foods if they are thiamine-deficient, but this may be due to aversion to the deficient diet.

Animal studies often show animals cannot consistently select healthy diets when palatable alternatives are present and can become obese.

Diseased people/animals may struggle to distinguish between illness caused by pathogens and nutritional deficiency.

Scurvy is a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency, causing gum swelling and bleeding, wounds not healing, and eventually death.

It took a clinical trial (the world's first) to identify the link between lime juice and the prevention of scurvy.

Developing a preference for a food flavour through experience, often associated with sweetness or other positive experiences.

Linking a particular flavour to a feeling.

Our liking for sweet foods might be linked to recognizing that sweet tastes often signal energy.

Developing an aversion to a food flavour as a result of past experiences.

Learning to associate a medicine's flavour with its perceived positive effect.

Associating flavours with drug effects.