Past Studies

The Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences is currently recruiting girls, ages 8-9 and 15-17 years, to participate in a study aimed at learning more about the relationship between puberty and beverage consumption.

The purpose of this study is to determine how substances commonly found in drinks affect food choices and consumption at breakfast. 

The purpose of this series of studies was to understand the effects of soda additives on taste preferences in adolescents, ages 12-17 years.

Participants attended our laboratory at the University at Buffalo (Main Street Campus) for three visits lasting approximately 20 minutes to one hour each.
They were asked to drink a beverage, complete questionnaires and play a game. Additionally, participants drank soda provided by us every day and filled out
a food and sleep log over the course of two weeks.

We conducted a study of adults, ages 18 to 50, aimed at determining the effects of varying frequencies of moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic exercise on food reinforcement.

Food reinforcement is an empirical index of motivation to get food. We measure this in the laboratory by determining how hard people will work to get access to food. We studied factors that influence food reinforcement in obese and non-obese adults. We found that repeated intake of the same snack food for two weeks reduces food reinforcement in non-obese adults, but increases food reinforcement in obese adults. We have repeated this a number of times, showing that this increase in obese adults only occurs when larger portions of snack food are consumed and that it is specific to high energy density (or less healthy) foods. We are currently trying to identify factors that predict this response to snack food in adults and determine if this response pattern predicts weight gain over time.

Our lab conducted a study on the effects of chewing gum on eating habits. Participants chewed gum before all meals and snacks for two weeks while recording intake, and recorded intake for a week without chewing gum. There were also four short visits to our lab to pick up gum, food journals and get weighed.

The Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences is currently recruiting adults, ages 18-50, to participate in a study aimed at learning more about the relationship between hydration status and food intake. 

Our lab conducted a study of adults, ages 18 to 50, to examine the effects of soda additives on working memory and salivation.

Sensory systems play a major role in food preferences and food selection. We were interested in the impact of sensory system functioning on food reinforcement. Our preliminary findings have found little impact of olfactory functioning on food reinforcement. Gustatory functioning appears to be negatively associated with food reinforcement, in that lower sensitivity to tastants, such as sucrose and fat, are associated with greater food reinforcement. We are currently replicating these preliminary findings and exploring the impact of suprathreshold responses to sweet and fat taste as well as impact of post-ingestive feedback on sensation and its relationship to food reinforcement.

Ingredients in commercially available sports drinks have been found to affect perception. This study investigated the relationship between those ingredients and one's perception toward exercise--specifically, liking and perceived exertion.

This study aimed to determine how substances normally found in soft drinks affect vegetable liking and preference.

The yogurt study investigated how food substances commonly found in soft drinks affect food liking and preference. The purpose of the study was to determine if caffeine taste preference can generalize from a beverage to a paired sweet and fat food and if there is a difference in the degree of generalization between high energy density and low energy density foods.