Kees de Graaf

Kees (C) de Graaf is professor in Sensory Science and Eating Behavior (SSEB) at the Division of Human Nutrition & Health of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. The mission of the SSEB group is “to make healthy choice the happy choice”, and is focused on the psychobiological mechanisms underlying food choice and eating behavior.

De Graaf is educated as a nutritionist and obtained his PhD in 1988 in taste psychophysics. De Graaf has published about 300 scientific papers, mostly on the psychobiology of eating behaviour. His work has been cited more than 11.000 times.  Research and teaching activities focus on the meaning of sensory signals, such as taste, odor, and texture for eating behaviour and the regulation of energy intake.

A substantial part of his recent work focuses on the reformulation of foods to moderate energy intake while maintaining the palatability/liking of foods. Key properties of foods are the eating rate (g/min) and the energy density (kcal/g), together making up the energy intake rate (kcal/min). The energy intake rate may possibly considered as a measure for the obesogenic capacity of a food. This perspective may help to design innovative and attractive foods of which people do not easily overeat.