Memory of eating was more accurate than memory for other similar behaviors; foods higher in calories were better remembered than foods lower in calories

Calories count: Memory of eating is evolutionarily special. Benjamin M. Seitz, Aaron P. Blaisdell, A. Janet Tomiyama. Journal of Memory and Language, Volume 117, April 2021, 104192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104192

Highlights

• The Memory of Eating Task was used to systematically study memory of eating.

• Memory of eating was more accurate than memory for other similar behaviors.

• Foods higher in calories were better remembered than foods lower in calories.

• Eating food slowly resulted in better memory of eating.

• These evolutionary influences on memory should be considered in memory models.

Abstract: How well do we remember eating food? Some nutritional scientists have decried memory of eating as being highly unreliable (i.e. low in accuracy), but it is unclear if memory of eating is particularly worse than memory of other behaviors. In fact, evolutionary reasoning suggests the mammalian memory system might be biased towards enhanced memory of eating. We created a novel behavioral task to investigate the relative strength and determinants of memory of eating. In this task, participants were cued to eat a single item of food every time a tone was sounded and were later asked to recall how many items of food they consumed. In Experiment 1, we found that memory for the behavior of eating was more accurate than memory for similar but noneating behaviors. In Experiment 2, we ruled out a potential physiological mechanism (glucose ingestion) behind this effect. Last, in two pre-registered studies, we explored determinants of memory of eating. In Experiment 3, we found that the caloric density of the consumed food item potentiates its ability to be remembered and in Experiment 4 we found that a slow eating rate results in more accurate memory of eating than a fast eating rate. Understanding these and future factors that influence memory of eating might be useful in designing intervention strategies to enhance memory of eating, which has been shown to reduce future food consumption. Ultimately these four studies inform our understanding of how selective pressures shaped memory and lay the groundwork for further investigations into memory of eating.

Keywords: Episodic memoryMemory of eatingAdaptive memoryEvolutionary psychologyCognitive control of eating