TY - JOUR
T1 - Economics of food intake in mice
T2 - Energy yield of the reinforcer
AU - Rowland, Neil E.
AU - Giddings, Ashley M.
AU - Minervini, Vanessa
AU - Robertson, Kimberly L.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - One of the Zeitgeists of the field for the study of ingestive behavior is that organisms are endowed with internal self-regulatory mechanisms that ensure optimal nutrition. However, the alarming increase in the prevalence of obesity challenges us to reconsider the extent to which internal regulatory mechanisms affect food intake, especially in a free market economy. Cued by the pioneering work of George Collier and his students, we have been examining food intake (demand) in mice when the effort or price of food is manipulated. We present two new experiments in mice that investigate the effect of energy yield per unit of food earned on working for food. The first experiment shows that when the nominal energy yield of each food pellet is halved by cellulose dilution, mice show relatively inelastic calorie-related demand despite the fact the cellulose diluted diet is unpalatable. The second experiment shows that the size of the pellet reinforcer does not have a major effect on food demand except in the extreme condition of small reward and high unit price. New analyses of distributions of responding are presented which suggest that mice work for "target" numbers of food rewards with only a small influence of price or energy gain.
AB - One of the Zeitgeists of the field for the study of ingestive behavior is that organisms are endowed with internal self-regulatory mechanisms that ensure optimal nutrition. However, the alarming increase in the prevalence of obesity challenges us to reconsider the extent to which internal regulatory mechanisms affect food intake, especially in a free market economy. Cued by the pioneering work of George Collier and his students, we have been examining food intake (demand) in mice when the effort or price of food is manipulated. We present two new experiments in mice that investigate the effect of energy yield per unit of food earned on working for food. The first experiment shows that when the nominal energy yield of each food pellet is halved by cellulose dilution, mice show relatively inelastic calorie-related demand despite the fact the cellulose diluted diet is unpalatable. The second experiment shows that the size of the pellet reinforcer does not have a major effect on food demand except in the extreme condition of small reward and high unit price. New analyses of distributions of responding are presented which suggest that mice work for "target" numbers of food rewards with only a small influence of price or energy gain.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.physbeh.2014.04.036
DO - 10.1016/j.physbeh.2014.04.036
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84918555566
VL - 136
SP - 104
EP - 110
JO - Physiology and Behavior
JF - Physiology and Behavior
SN - 0031-9384
ER -