Plasma ghrelin levels are responsive to short- and long-term nutrient fluctuation, rapidly decreasing with food consumption and increasing with food deprivation or weight loss. We hypothesized a vagal contribution to both responses. Nutrient-related ghrelin suppression may be mediated by gastrointestinal load-related vagal afferent activity, or depend upon vagal efferent input to the foregut, w...

humans suffer transient or persistent starvation due to a lack of food intake, either because of fasting, voluntary dieting, or due to the scarcity of available food. at the cellular level it is possible to possess pathological starvation during ischemia and solid tumors. blood provides many nutrients to our cells, and researchers provide these nutrients to cells in culture in the form of enric...

Diet failures are often attributed to an increase in cravings for attractive foods. However, accumulating evidence shows that food cravings actually decrease during energy-restricting weight-loss interventions. The current study aimed at elucidating possible mechanisms that may explain how and under which circumstances food cravings in- or decrease during dieting. Specifically, decreases in foo...

The effects of long-term starvation and subsequent refeeding on haematological variables, behaviour, rates of oxygen consumption and intermediary and energy metabolism were studied in morphologically similar surface- and cave-dwelling salamanders. To provide a hypothetical general model representing the responses of amphibians to food stress, a sequential energy strategy has been proposed, sugg...

Caloric restriction is the most effective and reproducible dietary intervention known to regulate aging and increase the healthy lifespan in various model organisms, ranging from the unicellular yeast to worms, flies, rodents, and primates. However, caloric restriction, which in most cases entails a 20-40% reduction of food consumption relative to normal intake, is a severe intervention that re...

The food responses of Drosophila larvae offer an excellent opportunity to study the genetic and neural regulation of feeding behavior. Compared with fed larvae, hungry larvae are more likely to display aggressive foraging, rapid food intake, compensatory feeding, and stress-resistant food procurement. Behavioral assays have been developed to quantitatively assess particular aspects of the hunge...

The brain maintains its mass and physiological functional capacity compared with other organs under harsh conditions such as starvation, a mechanism termed the 'selfish brain' theory. To further investigate this phenomenon, mice were examined following water and/or food deprivation. Although the body weights of the mice, the weight of the organs except the brain and blood glucose levels were si...

The Russian physiologist Pavlov considered eating as the most powerful relationship an organism has to its surrounding world (Pavlov 1953). This "food connection" is heavily regulated by internal state variables such as hunger. Prolonged periods of starving are one of the most tragic experiences of humanity and even mild conditions of food deprivation clearly affect consummatory behavior as ref...

Food insecurity has been rising across Europe following the Great Recession, but to varying degrees across countries and over time. The reasons for this increase are not well understood, nor are what factors might protect people’s access to food. Here we test the hypothesis that an emerging gap between food prices and wages can explain increases in reported inability to afford protein-rich food...

Predation on distasteful animals should favor warning coloration that is relatively conspicuous and phenotypically invariable. However, even among similarly colored individuals there can be variation in their warning signals. In butterflies, individual differences in larval feeding history could cause this variation. The warning signal of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly, Battus philenor L. (...