Are genetic association studies useful for the elusive negative calorie illusion. Replicating Chernev’s calorie estimate findings
2012
FORWOOD, S.E. | MARTEAU, T.M.
In a set of intriguing studies, Chernev and colleagues show that participants will estimate a vice food (e.g. cheeseburger) when paired with a virtue food (e.g. celery sticks) to have fewer calories than the vice food alone. This is counter to the real calorific content of the foods, but it is also worrying as including token quantities of virtue foods in a prevalent feature of the presentation of many HFSS foods. If this negative calorie illusion is a robust effect, it may have adverse effects on food purchasing and consumption. In a number of studies, we have sought to replicate this finding, whilst also collecting more conventional measures of the target food: estimates of expected satiety, of health attributes, of liking and of wanting, to better understand the nature of these calorie estimates. Firstly we have observed that calorie estimates are a problematic measure, showing a high variance distribution with a strong positive skew. A number of strategies are suggested to overcome this issue. Secondly, we have found that the negative calorie illusion is not a robust finding, having replicated it in one but not a second identical experiment. It may arise from contrast effects following the use of an anchor to reduce variance resulting from people’s lack of calorie-content knowledge, a hypothesis tested in a third experiment. Finally calorie estimates do not covary with any of our other measures, and can therefore be considered a useful additional measure of the properties of a food item.
显示更多 [+] 显示较少 [-]