Anouk Hendriks, Assistant Professor
Anouk’s research focuses on two main topics: picky eating behavior in young children and sensory-specific satiation/the variety effect:
Picky eating behavior in children: In a longitudinal study, together with Sjaan Nederkoorn and Anouk van den Brand, she studies the role of cognitive processes in child eating behavior, more specifically, picky eating. They explore how sensory perception, decision-making, food knowledge, cognitive biases and parental behavior relate to picky eating in young children.
Sensory-specific satiation/the variety effect: The term sensory-specific satiation refers to the phenomenon that, when a food is eaten, the pleasantness of this food decreases, while other non-eaten foods remain pleasant. In other words, when I am eating crisps, these crisps will decrease in pleasantness, while I still evaluate chocolate (which I did not eat) as evenly pleasant. Related to sensory-specific satiation is the variety effect, which entails that people tend to eat more when there is a larger variety of foods available. Anouk investigates the mechanisms of sensory-specific satiation, the variety effect, and their roles in eating behavior and food choice.
Publications that I’m most proud of
Room for dessert! A series of studies on sensory satiation and food variety. Doctoral Thesis, Maastricht University, 2022.
In a series of studies, I investigated sensory-specific satiation – the reason why you always have room for dessert. I describe its fundamentals and applications and explore its relationship with the so-called ‘variety effect’ (you eat more when you have more variety to choose from).
Child-reported vegetable neophobia is associated with risk avoidance for distaste in children aged 4–15 years. Appetite, 2023.
In an experiment among NEMO science museum visitors, we found that children who are more reluctant to try new foods take less risk on a jelly bean gambling game (they try to avoid having to eat a soap-tasting jelly bean).
‘Gatverdamme, je zou er maar zo uitzien’. Over gewichtsstigma versus gezondheid op elk gewicht. [About fat shaming, weight stigma and health]. De Psycholoog, 2020.
People with overweight and obesity are facing weight stigma in almost all areas of life, which leads to negative physical and mental health consequences. The ‘health at every size’ approach tries to eliminate this stigmatization, but will this approach be effective to tackle the obesity epidemic?
