Changes in Food Reinforcement During Obesity Treatment
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00200291. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
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Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
The reinforcing value of food, or how much a person "wants" a food, is an important determinant of food intake. Thus far, food reinforcement has only been studied in laboratory settings, and no studies have examined whether the reinforcing value of food is altered when dietary changes are made. The chronic deprivation that occurs when a low-calorie, low-fat diet is implemented for weight loss may increase the reinforcing value of all foods, but particularly for restricted high-fat foods. Greater increases in the reinforcing value of high-fat foods relative to low-fat foods may be detrimental for sustaining newly adopted eating behaviors that produce weight loss, whereas greater increases in the reinforcing value of low-fat foods relative to high-fat foods may aid in maintaining healthy eating behaviors. The aim of this application is to measure food reinforcement in a clinical setting to determine if food reinforcement changes when a traditional weight loss diet is prescribed. For this ancillary study, 147 volunteers will be recruited from the 165 overweight and obese women participating in the Program to Reduce Incontinence by Diet and Exercise (PRIDE) at The Miriam Hospital. As part of PRIDE, these participants will be randomized in a 2-to-1 ratio to either a 6-month weight loss intervention or usual care. Assessments of food reinforcement, dietary intake, and weight will occur at 0 and 6 months. Given that the intervention group changes their diet relative to the usual care group, it is hypothesized: 1) the intervention group will have greater increases in the reinforcing value of both high- and low-fat foods than the usual care group from 0 to 6 months; and 2) within the intervention group, decreases in frequency of consumption of high-fat foods will be related to increases in the reinforcing value of high-fat foods from 0 to 6 months. These results will lead to a novel line of research, examining the relationship between food reinforcement and weight loss maintenance, so that diets can be designed to promote changes in food reinforcement that aid in sustaining dietary changes and weight loss.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT00200291
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 147 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 21 Years to 70 Years
- Sex
- Female
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepts healthy volunteers
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Jun 30, 2004
- Primary completion
- Sep 30, 2007
- Completion
- Sep 30, 2007
- Last update posted
- Apr 19, 2012
2004 – 2007
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center | Providence | Rhode Island | 02903 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00200291, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Apr 19, 2012 · Synced Sep 3, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT00200291 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.