The Regulation of Food Intake in Humans
Hopkins M, Blundell J, Halford J, King N, Finlayson G (2016) Endotext Online resource, endotext.org
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Abstract:
Knowledge of the regulation of food intake is crucial to an understanding of body weight and obesity. Traditionally, food intake has been researched within the homeostatic approach to physiological systems pioneered by Claude Bernard, Walter Cannon and others; and because feeding is a form of behaviour, it forms part of what Curt Richter referred to as the behavioural regulation of body weight (or behavioural homeostasis).The idea was that eating behaviour is stimulated and inhibited by internal signalling systems (for the drive and suppression of eating respectively) in order to regulate the internal environment (energy stores, tissue needs). It is also important to note however that day-to-day food involves the co-ordination of both homeostatic and non-homeostatic feedback.
The term ‘obesigenic environment’ has entered into scientific discourse and implies that the potency of the external environment is in part responsible for the increases in food intake that is one of the causal agencies underlying the epidemic of obesity. This approach has 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 a major cause of an increase in food intake associated with the rise of obesity resides in the hedonic rather than the homeostatic system.
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