Obesity and overweight increased dramatically in the past decades in most countries. Our modern food environment, characterized by an easy accessibility and wide availability of tempting foods, is often held responsible for this epidemic. However, it is not exactly clear how the food environment gets under the skin. People are often considered victims of the food environment they are exposed to, but this view may be too myopic. Individuals make interpretations of the food environment, respond to food environments, navigate the food environment, but also learn from the environment.  In this talk I will present our research on how individuals and environments interact in the context of food and eating. I will discuss results from experimental work on novel intervention strategies, such as nudging and temptation exposure.

Talk organized by the PSYFOOD UCL-ULB joint research group (Promotors: Axel Cleeremans, Olivier Corneille, Olivier Klein, Olivier Luminet, Stephan Van den Broucke)