BACKGROUND High sodium intake is a potential risk factor of gastric cancer. However, limited information is available on the relationship between salty food preference or intake and risk of gastric cancer. The aim of the present study was to determine the association between these variables among the Japanese population. METHODS Between 1988 and 1990, 15,732 men and 24,997 women aged 40-79 ye...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Although there are many studies on the umami receptor and its signaling pathway, literature on the effect of umami taste acuity on dietary choices in healthy subjects is limited. The current study aims to clarify the relationship between umami taste acuity with sweet or bitter taste acuity, food preference and intake. METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN Forty-two healthy Japane...

In a baseline condition, pigeons chose between an alternative that always provided food following a 30-s delay (100% reinforcement) and an alternative that provided food half of the time and blackout half of the time following 30-s delays (50% reinforcement). The different outcomes were signaled by different-colored keylights. On average, each alternative was chosen approximately equally often,...

Neural circuits implicated in drug conditioning, craving and relapse overlap extensively with those involved in natural reward and reinforcement. To determine whether specificity could be detected in conditioned brain responses to drugs versus food, male outbred HSD:ICR mice were conditioned to a common environment using either 20 mg/kg cocaine (ip) or a familiar food (under food restriction). ...

Marmite is a popular food eaten around the world, to which individuals have commonly considered themselves either “lovers” or “haters”. We aimed to determine whether this food preference has a genetic basis. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for Marmite taste preference using genotype and questionnaire data from a cohort of 261 healthy adults. We found 1 single nucleotide poly...

Food preferences are acquired through experience and can exert strong influence on choice behavior. In order to choose which food to consume, it is necessary to maintain a predictive representation of the subjective value of the associated food stimulus. Here, we explore the neural mechanisms by which such predictive representations are learned through classical conditioning. Human subjects wer...

A female's mate preference is a potentially complex function relating variation in multiple male phenotypes with her probability of accepting individual males as a mate. Estimating the quantitative genetic basis preference functions within a population is empirically challenging yet key to understanding preference evolution. We employed a recently described approach that uses random-coefficient...

Researchers have demonstrated that both deprivation and satiation can affect the outcome of preference assessments for food. In the current study, paired-stimulus preference assessments for tangible items were conducted under three conditions: control, deprivation, and satiation. Three persons with developmental disabilities and 3 typically developing preschool children served as participants. ...

We use a money pump argument to measure deviations from the revealed preference axioms. Using a panel data set of food expenditures, we find a large number of violations of the weak axiom of revealed preference. The money pump costs are small, which indicate that the violations of revealed preference are not severe. While most households’ behavior deviates from rationality, by our measure they ...