Do unsuccessful dieters intentionally underreport food intake?

Abstract

Objective A bogus pipeline paradigm was utilized to assess whether food intake underreporting by unsuccessful dieters is intentional. Method: Twenty‐eight subjects completed 1‐week food diaries. Then, 17 subjects in the experimental condition kept 2‐week food diaries while being told the researcher was verifying their report. Eleven subjects in the control group were asked merely to self‐monitor for two more weeks. Results: Results indicate that subjects in the experimental group reported significantly greater intake than control subjects, when controlling for reported intake during the screening phase and weight change. Discussion: Thus, the belief that the researcher could verify their report improved the accuracy of patients' self‐report. However, all subjects continued to underreport their dietary intake. In summary, underreporting may be an intentional attempt to manage presentation to others in a society that is increasingly critical of overweight persons. © 1998 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Eat Disord 24: 259–266, 1998.

Increasing Honest Responding on Cognitive Distortions in Child Molesters: The Bogus Pipeline Revisited

“…Others made enquiries about whether the BP would ever be used in the court room. Taken together with previous successful BP implementations over a wide range of areas (see Jones & Sigall, 1971;Mulheim, Allison, Heshka, & Heymsfield, 1998;Roese & Jamieson, 1993), our information suggests that the BP was genuinely increasing honest responding on our measures. However, it is possible that some men in this study persisted with minimizing their responses even under the BP condition, and that their self-reported belief in the bogus pipeline was simply a product of experimenter expectancy effects.…”

Measuring food intake in studies of obesity

“…However, it must be underscored that subjects living in a metabolic unit are unlikely to be consuming a diet resembling their typical one, and the unusualness of the diet itself, rather than the knowledge of being observed, may have improved their recall of the diet. Other research using the 'bogus pipeline method', whereby subjects think their true intake is known by observers, seemed to suggest that belief that the investigator 'knows' is only part of the problem 18 . Specifically, the degree of underreporting in a largely overweight subject group was only partially normalised when subjects believed their true energy requirements were being monitored with doubly labelled water.…”

A New Method for Measuring Meal Intake in Humans via Automated Wrist Motion Tracking

“…The typical procedure is for a subject to write down everything eaten or go through a daily directed-interview process. Numerous studies have shown that people have a tendency to underreport their consumption using these methods (Champagne et al 2002; Glanz et al 1997; Jonnalagadda et al 2000; Lichtman et al 1992; Muhlheim et al 1998; Tooze et al 2004). Estimates of underreporting range from 10 to 30 % for normal weight subjects to 20–50 % for obese adults and children (Champagne et al 2002).…”