Nutrition Conversations · The Canadian Nutrition Society

Understanding eating behaviours to promote healthy eating, metabolic health and body weight management with Dr. Vicky Drapeau

·35 min·3 clips

Dr. Drapeau identifies a low-satiety phenotype where some people can't recognize hunger cues, increasing obesity risk.

Dr. Vicky Drapeau, dietitian and professor in Physical Education at Universite Laval, co-founder of the Clinique de Nutrition at Laval, joins Nutrition Conversations to discuss her research on the interplay of eating behaviors, appetite control, and metabolic health. Drapeau describes herself as a generalist nutritionist motivated by her clinical experience with real clients over 20 years, which taught her that obesity management must address not just what people eat but how they eat and why individual responses to the same diet vary dramatically. Using data from the Quebec Family Study, a longitudinal cohort launched in 1978, she found that decreasing fat and sugary foods while increasing whole fruit and skim or partly skim milk was consistently associated with improved body weight outcomes over time. Her research also identified three-factor eating behavior profiles, specifically the combination of rigid cognitive restraint, disinhibition, and susceptibility to hunger, as associated with higher adiposity. She developed the low satiety phenotype concept to describe individuals with weak satiety responsiveness, measured in the lab using a standardized 600-700 calorie breakfast and visual analog appetite scales. People with low satiety phenotype show greater wanting for high-fat foods, more cravings, more night eating symptoms, and in the WILL weight loss intervention cohort, less favorable response to caloric restriction programs. The discussion turns to genetic factors contributing to individual variability in obesity risk and response to dietary intervention, including her ongoing work using nutrigenomics approaches. Tone is academic, collaborative, and research-oriented. Best suited for nutrition researchers, dietitians, and health professionals interested in appetite regulation and personalized dietary intervention.

As heard by us

A measured look at appetite, genetics, and body weight beyond willpower.

Dr. Vicky Drapeau's conversation with Shirin Panahi treats eating habits as shaped by biology and environment rather than willpower alone, and it keeps its attention on how appetite and body weight can reflect both genetics and context.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want to understand weight as more than a willpower story.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Nutrition Conversations