Reinforcing value and hypothetical behavioral economic demand for food and their relation to BMI

Abstract Food is a primary reinforcer, and food reinforcement is related to obesity. The reinforcing value of food can be measured by establishing how hard someone will work to get food on progressive-ratio schedules. An alternative way to measure food reinforcement is a hypothetical purchase task which creates behavioral economic demand curves. This paper studies whether reinforcing value and hypothetical behavioral demand approaches are assessing the same or unique aspects of food reinforcement for low (LED) and high (HED) energy density foods using a combination of analytic approaches in females of varying BMI. Results showed absolute reinforcing value for LED and HED foods and relative reinforcing value were related to demand intensity ( r 's = 0.20–0.30, p 's  r 's = 0.17–0.22, p 's