The Control of Food Intake in Humans

Excerpt

Knowledge of the factors influencing food intake is crucial to form an understanding of energy balance and obesity. Classical physiological feedback models propose that eating behavior is stimulated and inhibited by internal signaling systems (for the drive and suppression of eating, respectively) to maintain stability of the internal environment (usually energy or nutrient stores). However day-to-day food intake involves complex interactions of both internal and external inputs coordinated through homeostatic, hedonic, and cognitive processes in the brain. Twenty-five years ago, the term ‘obesogenic environment’ entered into scientific discourse and implies that prompts, cues, and triggers from the external environment are largely responsible for the increases in food intake that underlie the epidemic of obesity. This approach revitalized interest in the sensory and external stimulation of food intake and has drawn attention to the hedonic dimension of appetite. There is now a very strong current of thought that energy balance regulation is asymmetric and excess food intake is due to poor homoeostatic defense against positive energy balances in an environment rich in available, accessible, and readily assimilated food energy. This does not mean that regulatory signals concerned with energy balance regulation are unimportant. Indeed, they appear to be of incremental importance in prolonged negative energy balances and help explain control and loss of control of food intake as a dynamic continuum. For complete coverage of all related areas of Endocrinology, please visit our on-line FREE web-text, WWW.ENDOTEXT.ORG.