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Updated: Aug 14, 2026
04:56
Assessment of Social Transmission of Food Preferences Behaviors
Published on: January 25, 2018
Evidence of commingling in human eating behavior
D B Allison1, S Heshka, B S Gorman
1Obesity Research Center, St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10025, USA.
Obesity Research
|September 1, 1993
Summary
Eating behavior distributions, including hunger and restraint, suggest a mixture of four distinct components, potentially indicating major gene effects influencing these traits.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral genetics
- Psychometrics
- Quantitative psychology
Background:
- Eating behavior is complex and may not follow a single distribution.
- Previous research suggests potential genetic influences on eating patterns.
- Understanding the underlying distributions can reveal population heterogeneity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test if eating behavior measures (hunger, disinhibition, restraint) fit a mixture model.
- To investigate the possibility of major gene action underlying eating behaviors.
- To determine the number of component distributions for these traits.
Main Methods:
- Administered self-report measures of hunger, disinhibition, and dietary restraint to 901 undergraduates.
- Applied statistical methods including residualization, skewness transformation, and Hartigan's dip statistic.
- Utilized maximum likelihood estimation and likelihood ratio tests to compare mixture models.
Main Results:
- The distributions for hunger, disinhibition, and restraint were significantly non-unimodal.
- A mixture model comprising four component distributions provided a significantly better fit than simpler models.
- These findings support a complex, multi-component structure for eating behavior measures.
Conclusions:
- The data strongly suggest that eating behavior measures are composed of four underlying component distributions.
- This multi-component structure is consistent with the hypothesis of major gene effects influencing eating behavior.
- Future research should explore the genetic basis of these identified eating behavior components.
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