Psychobiology of Food Choice&Eating Beh.

This course is focused on recent development in Nutrition Behaviour Research. The course will contain several parts:

• 22 lectures;
• group assignment: students can choose one out of six possible topics illustrated by a case study, and will work in small groups (5-6 persons), with the objective to create a webbased knowledge base on the topic;
• a computer practical where students will learn the basics of E-Prime®, a software program to create and run computerized questionnaires and experiments.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• understand physiological and psychological determinants of food choice and eating behaviour, and be able to reproduce, explain and apply this knowledge
• understand the complexity and multidisciplinary of many important issues in the psychobiology of food choice and eating behaviour. The group assignment aims at students display their ability to focus on different perspectives (e.g. nutritional, medical, social, psychological) and formulate a clear summary of relevant knowledge as part of a collectively built knowledgebase that contains knowledge elements from different perspectives;
• apply skills in work planning, organization and division amongst group members, as well as time management, planning and presentation skills;
• as a group collectively create a knowledge base, using new media in the blackboard environment (e.g. wiki or comparable format);
• describe the most important characteristics of nutrition behaviour and food choice using cultural, social, psychological and biological models;
• design and construct simple questionnaires and experimental tasks which measures social psychological determinants of food choice;
• present a comprehensive summary of their practical work to the participating staff.

Assumed Knowledge:
Social/behavioral aspects of nutrition, for example HNH20306 Nutrition Behaviour.