DEC 7

25: DEC 7

Assigned Reading

• Burkhard Bilger, "Can Babies Learn to Love Vegetables?," New Yorker, Nov 25, 2019 (12)
• Tarragon & Moreno, "Role of Endocannabinooids on Sweet Taste Perception, Food Preference, and Obesity-related Disorders" Chemical Senses v. 43, 3-16, 2018. (13)
• Rolls, Barbara, "The Role of Energy Density in the Overconsumption of Fat," American Society for Nutritional Sciences, 2000, 246-253. (7)

Burkhard Bilger, "Can Babies Learn to Love Vegetables?

• 1st theme: The Good Tastes Study - Susan Johnson U of Col. pediatrics. Baby taste tests.

• 2nd theme: Calvin Schwabe - veternary epidemiologist UC Davis. Unmentionable Cuisine . We're omnivores. We're passing up alot of food, like cats and beetles. In a sense we are our tastes -- supertasters, low tasters/high sugar preference. Julie Menella from Monell Chemical Senses. omnivores/brain plasticity (recall Shepard)

• 3rd theme: Saskia Sorrosa, CEO of Fresh Bellies -- Ecuadoran, didn't like baby food options for her daughter. Represents traditional cuisine argument for baby food (at the end of the article you get another example): babies eat adult foods, specially prepared. Palette Training - [interesting idea that our palattes are trained, even before birth, and in early childhood (Mennella - everything gets through to the fetus). Possibly the same systems and mechanisms as you would encounter in changing your diet (we are all Judge 7). Fresh Bellies is doing very well (new food economy!) Their formula: no added sugar, natural (acid) preservation instead of industrial pasteurization. 3x price (maybe another 50 cent egg lesson?)

• baby food industry back story -- 9 billion - mostly fruit and sweetened vegetables. Amy Bentley, Inventing Baby Food. Before vitamin discovery, veggies seen as source of illness due to unclearn conditions.

• 1921 Harold Clapp, first baby food. Some details there. 1969 baby food scandals - contamination and research on rats showing hypertension from baby food. 1/3 of baby food homemade.

• 4th theme: Inside Gerber's baby food testing facility. 2/3 market share! "baby black ops site". Judge #7. Baby sugar bliss points are twice adults. From 1970 - 2000 childhood obesity tripled. 7 month olds drinking soda. Gerber adds fruit to everything, not added sugar anymore. [But what sort of palatte training is fruit and veg? Or yours? How does your diet train your palatte?]

• Palatte training claim: it takes 10 tries. Most parents give up after 3-4 tries.

• New industrial baby and early childhood foods in development. More squeezable tubes for delivery.

• 5th theme - from baby food to military foods (big theme in food nutrition awareness historically was from military preparedness. Many battles lost to scurvy and malnutrition). How fighter pilots eat.

• Closing scene at African market in Maine. How people from non-industrial cuisines feed their babies. But you have to have a cuisine to do this. Americans have an "interrupted cuisine"

Tarragon & Moreno, "Role of Endocannabinooids on Sweet Taste Perception, Food Preference, and Obesity-related Disorders"

• You could work from the abstract on this one. I just wanted you to see some technical research to balance the Nyer article. Also, the research paradigm in this article connects with the "conditioned hypereating" theory of Kessler and depends upon findings in neurogastronomy.

• Summary: Claims that highly palatable food is part of obesity problem. References mechanisms of food choice: reward system, environmental cues, internal factors. The article is a literature review of: 1. research on how our food tastes emerge and get fixed, especially sweet taste; 2. how genetics, experience, lifestyle, etc. influence palette; 3. the role of the "endocannabinoid system (ECS)" in setting the palette.

• Some highlights: research on parallel between food cravings and drug cravings (also in Kessler and Shepard). Details of sweet receptors (recently found in the gut, adipose tissue, and the brain, as well). There is a genetic dimension to sweet taste perception. p. 4 - people with particular alleles of the T1R genes have greater sweetness discrimination (note, they may have a more multi-sensory experience of sweetness). (table 1 summarizes some of this research).

• ECS (endocannabinoid system) - mechanisms. [Digresssion: From wiki page on ECS: "A related study found that endocannabinoids affect taste perception in taste cells[60] In taste cells, endocannabinoids were shown to selectively enhance the strength of neural signaling for sweet tastes, whereas leptin decreased the strength of this same response. While there is need for more research, these results suggest that cannabinoid activity in the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens is related to appetitive, food-seeking behavior.[57]"

• eCBs are synthesized as part of the chemical system that gives us hedonic responses from food. Example practical studies: Argueta p. 6. "Dysregulation" of the ECS is related to decrease in pleasure from food. Some research, p. 7, on effects of high O6/O3 ratios on ECS. Connections also between ECS and inflammation, depression.

• from conclusion.

Rolls, Barbara, "The Role of Energy Density in the Overconsumption of Fat,"

• The nutrition rock star herself. [1]

• Energy density theory - High energy dense, low volume foods cause lower levels of satiety.

• Back to "Does fat make you fat?" - Maybe the energy density of fat, like the density of highly palatable foods, makes you unsatiated (or satiated too quickly). Old idea: fat has a unique ability to make you fat. New research, when controlled for energy density, fats and carbs have similar effects on satiety (measured as subsequent food intake after a "pre load" of some food under study).

• water as beverage vs. water in foods (as in youtube) -

• 269S: studies suggesting that we eat by weight, not by energy intake. So the same amount of food by weight, if energy dense, will increase our calorie intake. [Any speculations on why we might have evolve to connect satisfaction to volume of food, not just energy?]

• Note: High volume, high nutrition, low density foods are typical of humble cuisines.

Final Essay: Satiety and Dietary Change (1000 words)

• Topic Prompt: Based on the reading in this unit, describe the human "flavor-reward-satisfaction" system and show how this system not only connects us to our diets, but helps explain unhealthy eating patterns, including overeating (750). Are there some practical lessons we can take from this research? (250)

• Advice about collaboration: I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes and readings, and your own notes. Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. It's a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. Put a word count in the file.
2. In Word, check "File" and "Options" to make sure your name does not appear as author. You may want to change this to "anon" for this document.
3. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font, using normal margins.
4. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "FoodHappiness".
5. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Final Essay dropbox by Monday, December 14, 2020, midnight.