Focusing on food during lunch enhances lunch memory and decreases later snack intake.

We investigated whether eating lunch mindfully, in contrast to eating with distractions or no particular focus, reduces later snack intake and if this is related to a measure of meal memory. The design was between-subjects with three conditions. Twenty-nine female undergraduate students either ate a fixed lunch while (1) focusing on the sensory characteristics of the food as they ate (food focus group), (2) reading a newspaper article about food (food thoughts control group) or (3) in the absence of any secondary task (neutral control group).

To what extent can response shift theory explain the variation in prostate cancer patients' reactions to treatment side-effects? A review.

Background: There appears to be a conflict between published literature and in vitro evidence concerning the effects of treatment-induced side-effects on prostate cancer patients. There is an existing body of research which indicates evidence for a phenomenon whereby quality-of-life scores of patients' post-treatment reflect no difference to healthy controls and are perhaps even higher than before treatment, despite the substantial side-effects such as sexual and urinary dysfunction. However, when observing clinical patients at Good Hope Hospital urology clinic, it appears that whilst patients are seemingly unaffected by the threat of sexual and urinary side-effects of treatment at diagnosis, they become increasingly concerned about these consequences following treatment, indicating evidence for a response shift in the opposite direction.