ArticleEating behaviors2018
Reinforcing value and hypothetical behavioral economic demand for food and their relation to BMI.
Article in Eating behaviors, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The introduction of new food retail opportunities in lower-income communities and the impact on fruit and vegetable intake: a systematic review.Translational behavioral medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Hypothetical food purchase tasks and eating behavior: A systematized review and future directions.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2026Review
- A Behavioral Economic Characterization of the Impact of the COVID-19 Quarantine on Reinforcer Diversity, Behavior, and Health.Perspectives on behavior science · 2026Review
- The quantitative economon model as a novel computational tool for addiction research.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Using behavioral economics to understand reinforcement mechanisms of loss-of-control eating: An ecological momentary assessment approach.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2025Article
- Integrating maintaining theories for addiction and binge-eating pathology: A review of affective and reward-based theories.Clinical psychology review · 2025Review
- Quantitative Economon Model of Transactions for Drugs and Other Commodities.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The role of hyper-palatable foods in energy intake measured using mobile food photography methodology.Eating behaviors · 2025Article
- Integrating aspects of affect, reward, and cognition to develop more comprehensive models of binge-eating pathology.The International journal of eating disorders · 2023Review
- Article
- Binge eating, overeating and food addiction: Approaches for examining food overconsumption in laboratory rodents.Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry · 2023Review
- Reward and inhibition in obesity and cigarette smoking: Neurobiological overlaps and clinical implications.Physiology & behavior · 2023Review
- Valuing the Diversity of Research Methods to Advance Nutrition Science.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Article
- A behavioral economic demand analysis of mothers' decision to exclusively breastfeed in the workplace.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2022Article
- Decreased excitability of leptin-sensitive anterior insula pyramidal neurons in a rat model of compulsive food demand.Neuropharmacology · 2022Article
- New directions in modelling dysregulated reward seeking for food and drugs.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Review
- Natural and synthetic estrogens specifically alter nicotine demand and cue-induced nicotine seeking in female rats.Neuropharmacology · 2021Article
- The impact of short sleep on food reward processes in adolescents.Journal of sleep research · 2021Article
- High reinforcing value of food is related to slow habituation to food.Eating behaviors · 2020Article
- The Hotel Room Purchase Task: Effects of Gender and Partner Desirability on Demand for Hypothetical Sex in Individuals with Disordered Cocaine Use and Controls.Archives of sexual behavior · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
Food is a primary reinforcer, and food reinforcement is related to obesity. The reinforcing value of food can be measured by establishing how hard someone will work to get food on progressive-ratio schedules. An alternative way to measure food reinforcement is a hypothetical purchase task which creates behavioral economic demand curves. This paper studies whether reinforcing value and hypothetical behavioral demand approaches are assessing the same or unique aspects of food reinforcement for low (LED) and high (HED) energy density foods using a combination of analytic approaches in females of varying BMI. Results showed absolute reinforcing value for LED and HED foods and relative reinforcing value were related to demand intensity (r's = 0.20-0.30, p's < 0.01), and demand elasticity (r's = 0.17-0.22, p's < 0.05). Correlations between demographic, BMI and restraint, disinhibition and hunger variables with the two measures of food reinforcement were different. Finally, the two measures provided unique contributions to predicting BMI. Potential reasons for differences between the reinforcing value and hypothetical purchase tasks were actual responding versus hypothetical purchasing, choice of reinforcers versus purchasing of individual foods in the demand task, and the differential role of effort in the two tasks. Examples of how a better understanding of food reinforcement may be useful to prevent or treat obesity are discussed, including engaging in alternative non-food reinforcers as substitutes for food, such as crafts or socializing in a non-food environment, and reducing the value of immediate food reinforcers by episodic future thinking.
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Registered trials
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