Eating Behaviour

Question 1

We have an innate dislike to sour and bitter tastes (CIITE)

including veg

Answer 1

Steiner, Forestell

Question 2

intro to dev models

Answer 2

A developmental approach to eating behaviour emphasises the importance of learning and experiences in the development of food preferences in childhood. (Birch)
The development of food preferences can be understood in terms of exposure, social learning and associative learning.

Question 3

Neophobia

Answer 3

The fear and specific distrust of unfamiliar foods
We learn from a young age to be avoidant of certain foods because they might do us damage. Thought to be an adaptive mechanism that humans share with animals to protect them from potentially harmful foods (Rozin).
Linked with learned safety theory (Kalat) –neophobia can be overcome by consuming the unfamiliar food without aversive consequence allows it to be accepted into the consumer‟s diet.
It generally decreases with age (Birch, 1989)

Question 4

Fussy eating

Answer 4

is the rejection of familiar and unfamiliar food, leading to the consumption of an inadequate variety of foods (Wardle et al, 2001).
Peaks aged 2-3 years, then declines (Cano et al, 2015).
Often picky eaters have a highly restricted diet, which may persist into adulthood (Galloway et al;
Fussy eating is problematic because a fussy child may eat too little and it can be very difficult to persuade them to eat a healthy diet (Harris)

Question 5

One of the questions we are trying to answer relating to fussy eating is..

Answer 5

does fussy eating decline at 3 or have parents adapted to it? Eg – got a child who doesn’t eat rice at 3 or 4, so parents just take rice off menu? = could be problematic bcause diet may become more restricted or the fussy eating is ignored

Question 6

Neophobia and/or fussy eating is a transient (not lasting long) stage.
Direct relationship between exposure and food preference - taste regimes

Answer 6

Birch and Marlin - provided 2-year-old children with up to 20 opportunities to taste unfamiliar cheeses or fruits over a four-week period and found that 10 or more tastes of the food resulted in increased acceptance of it.
Found support for exposure theory as exposure correlated with preference. The more they were exposed the more they liked it.

Wardle - found that after 14 days of exposure to a vegetable that a child previously rated as disliked, was successful in changing the child’s attitude to the vegetable and they reported greater preference.

Question 7

Evalutative point against exposure

Answer 7

parents often report that they tend to avoid the stress associated with repeatedly offering food to be rejected. Often parents only offer the new food 3-5 times before giving up to avoid ‘bothersome behaviour’ (Carruth and Skinner).

Question 8

Familiarity without taste exposure

Answer 8

Heath - ., present an intervention that does not require repeated exposures. Within their study, they instead focus on the familiarity of unfamiliar foods to increase willingness to accept it. Such findings help to overcome neophobia.

Question 9

Cockroft et al

Answer 9

preschool children consume only 70% of the recommended

daily allowance of fruit and vegetables and that only one in five children achieve five portions a day

Question 10

Wardle et al

Answer 10

3 primary schools, 14 days, exposure increased preference. naturalistic study!

Question 11

children who only very reluctantly tasted a food were likely to develop even more negative attitudes towards the food; these authors recommend that parents treat children‟s reluctance to try new foods with sensitivity in order to avoid creating barriers to further familiarisation.

Answer 11

Tuorila

Question 12

Williams et al

Answer 12

The more new foods are added to the diet, the less exposure is needed

Question 13

Cooke et al

Answer 13

Indirect support for familiarity also comes from seeing the positive impact of others eating foods

Question 14

Fisher et al

Answer 14

parental intake of fruits and vegetables increases - - girls’ fruit and vegetable intake was positively related to their parents’ reported fruit and vegetable intake

Question 15

What is social learning?

Answer 15

Social learning describes the impact of observing other people’s behaviour on one’s own behaviour.

Question 16

Birch (social learning)

Answer 16

Highlighted the impact of peer influence - found that when children were placed to sit next to children with a preference for a vegetable, that child conformed and eventually chose the same vegetable as their peer. This even continued at follow-up. They did this study on range of ages but found it was more common in younger children- shows importance of introducing foods early on!

Question 17

measured the amount of advertising of fizzy drinks on tv between 2002-2004 and consumption of fizzy drinks in 2004 in a group of ’11,000 nationally representative children’. Found children who watched more tv adverts were more likely to consume a higher number of fizzy drinks. There was a higher intake among lower SES children. Relied of self-report

Answer 17

Andreyera

Question 18

Andreyera

Answer 18

measured the amount of advertising of fizzy drinks on tv between 2002-2004 and consumption of fizzy drinks in 2004 in a group of ’11,000 nationally representative children’. Found children who watched more tv adverts were more likely to consume a higher number of fizzy drinks. There was a higher intake among lower SES children. Relied of self-report

Question 19

Meyer

Answer 19

found that there was a positive correlation between peer influence and disordered eating in 10-12 year old girls. This link was also determined by how ‘likeable’ the peer was

Question 20

Story et al (social learning)

Answer 20

Friends and Parents provide 2 of the most important social influences on adolescents eating behaviour

Question 21

Salvy

Answer 21

Looked at influence of peers and parents in isolation. they found that food selection is differentially influenced by the source of social influence

Adolescent girls try to convey a healthy eating impression with same-sex friends, they consumed more healthy foods in the presence of their friends than in the company of their mother. Whereas boys are less influenced by social context.(Male and female children consumed less energy from unhealthy snacks when in the presence of their mothers than when in the company of their friends. Conversely, female adolescents consumed less energy from unhealthy snacks and more energy from healthy snacks when they were with their friends than when with their mothers)

Question 22

Adolescents are more likely to eat breakfast if their parents do

Answer 22

Pearson

Question 23

Two forms of parental influences - and authors

Answer 23

through dieting or making negative comments about their own body. Brown concluded that a positive parental role model may be a better method for improving a child’s diet than attempts at dietary control. Birch and Fisher (2000) – found a strong correlation between the dietary restraint of the mother and the eating behaviour of the daughter, for example if the mother diets heavily the daughter is likely to take a similar attitude towards food

and through direct comments- Kluck - family culture, Smolak - neg comments

Question 24

evaluative points for social learning

Answer 24

Mothers and children are not always in line with each other. Wardle reported that mothers rated health as more important for their children than for themselves.
Alderson et al also found that mothers fed their children less healthy dairy products, breads and cereals, and ate fewer of these themselves

Question 25

unhealthy foods are given twice as much air time as healthy foods.

Answer 25

Ratnitz

Question 26

It has been argued that messages from the media only become problematic when they are reinforced by parents

Answer 26

Dunkley

Question 27

King et al

Answer 27

Moreover, it has been suggested that adverts may not directly influence food choice as adverts did not alter hunger or food choice but children did have better recall of the unhealthy ads in comparison to healthy.

Question 28

What is associative learning?

Answer 28

This refers to the impact of contingent factors on behaviour.

Question 29

One form of associative learning is by means of pairing food with a reward.

Answer 29

Positive adult attention compared with neural situations for example has been shown to increase preference (Birch).

Lowe- Over 16 days, children watched six video adventures featuring heroic peers (the Food Dudes) who enjoy eating fruit and vegetables, and received small rewards for eating these foods themselves.

• Consumption during the intervention was significantly higher than during baseline at lunchtime and at snacktime
• Consumption outside school was significantly higher during the intervention on weekdays but not weekend days.
• Following the intervention, children’s liking for fruit and vegetables also showed a significant increase

Hendy - short term effects of token economy but not in long run

Question 30

Another means is through using food as the reward. In this case, food is contingent upon another behaviour

Answer 30

Birch - reported complex relationship- Food acceptance increased if the foods were presented as a reward but that the more neutral conditions had no effect. This suggests that using food as a reward increases preference for that food.
This relationship was found to be complicated however, as in one study, juice was offered as a means to be allowed to play in a play area (Birch). Using the juice in this case reduced the preference for the juice.

Question 31

restricted foods can be seen as more desirable and can lead to over eating of this food given free choice

Answer 31

Fisher

Question 32

Dowey

Answer 32

Argued that differences in the literature relating to food and reward are reflective of methodological differences between studies, and that food intake should be measured not just the child’s stated preference.

Question 33

many forms and can relate to distorted body size estimation (CITE) and perceptions of reality versus those of an ideal (CITE). Associated with negative feelings (CITE)

Answer 33

Fallon et al)
Kronenfeld et al., 2010)
Ogden and Taylor

Question 34

Jefferey et al

Answer 34

women more likely than men to to show a greater discrepancy between their desired and actual weight and engage in both attempted and actual food restriction strategies and participate more in organized weight-loss programmes

Question 35

Female and male participants’ body dissatisfaction increased between middle and high school, and increased further during the transition to young adulthood

Answer 35

Bucchianeri – 10 year longitudinal study -

Question 36

3 measures of body dissatisfaction

Answer 36

Body Areas Satisfaction Scale (Brown et all) and the body dissatisfaction section of the Eating Disorder inventory (Garner)

another measure is through figure stimuli introduced by Stunkard - requires the respondent to select which silhouette is closest to how they currently perceive themselves and which silhouette they would prefer to look like. From these two responses, three variables are derived current silhouette, preferred silhouette, and a silhouette discrepancy score (current-preferred)

Question 37

Cultural differences for body dissatisfaction

Answer 37

Kronenfeld used figural stimuli and found that body dissatisfaction differs largely across racial and ethnic groups, with lower body dissatisfaction among African American than White women.

Question 38

Cash

Answer 38

The changes that occur in body image often coincide with social trends

Question 39

Restrained eating leads to undereating (CITE) and overeating

Answer 39

under - Kirkey

over - Herman, Jansen

Question 40

Warren & Cooper

Answer 40

During the diet there were significant changes in their cognitions concerning eating: subjects were more preoccupied with thoughts about food, had strong urges to eat more frequently and were more likely to feel out of control of their eating

Question 41

Restraint theory -transgression of boundaries

and evdience against this

Answer 41

Transgression of boundaries - Herman and Polivy (1984) who established disinhibition theory with Boundary Model of Eating Behaviour. The model implies that the consumption of food is driven by physiological factors; you start eating when you are hungry (hunger boundary) and stop eating when you are full (satiety boundary). In addition, restrained eaters create these boundaries cognitively, which is determined by fixed number of calories. In addition, once the diet boundary is reached in the preload, which exceeds their defined calories acceptance, individuals will eat until they reach satiety boundary limit. This presents a failure of dietary restrain on the attempt of weigh control.

Spencer - . Restrained eaters not only overeat when they have consumed a high caloric preload, they also overeat when they merely think they have eaten a high caloric preload. The fact that restrained eaters did not consider themselves to be overeating cast serious doubt on the idea that restrained subjects in the laboratory overeat because of a perceived breach of their diet, e.g. by passing the hypothesized diet boundary.

Question 42

shifts in cog set - restraint theory

Answer 42

Shifts in cog set
The prevailing explanation for the counter-intuitive overeating of restrained participants is a cognitive one. The cognitive explanation states that it is the perception of having overeaten which disinhibits the restrained cater.
The overeating found in dieters has also been understood in terms of shifts in the individual’s cognitive set. Researchers have highlighted two alternative cognitive shifts which explain why people overeat:
• Passive cog state involving motivational collapse and a state of giving in to the overpowering drive to eat. (Herman and Polivy 1983). When participants are passively giving in, they may state “im going to give into any urge iv’e got”(ogden and wardle 1991)
• Active cog state involving conditions such as rebellious or challenging – Ogden et al- found that dieters responded to high calorie food with an increase active state of mind such as “I don’t care” or “im just going to stuff my face”

Question 43

Response to denial (Restraint theory)
supported by ..
evidence against…

Answer 43

Is the ‘theory of ironic processes of mental control’ (Wegner, 1994) – Thought suppression and thought control has the paradoxical effect of making the thoughts the individual is trying to supress more salient.
When food is denied (diet), more likely to think about it and want it (use dev model- rewards).

Boon et al- participants were shown high vs low calorie food and were either distracted or not distracted. It was found that restrained eaters ate particularly more than the unrestrained eaters in the high calorie condition if they were distracted.
It is thought that restrained eaters have limited cognitive capacity, so when capacity is filled up by the distraction, their preoccupation with food can be translated into eating.

Polivy et al =Found that restrained eaters who are encouraged to focus on their diet do not overeat. Self attention counteracts the disinhibitory effects of a high calorific preload. Dieters who had to keep track of their food intake did not over eat.
Additionally, monitoring the success of one’s dieting inhibits overeating (Polivy and Herman, 1991)

Question 44

mood modification

Answer 44

This produces a consistent shift in the mood state (Rogers & Smit, 2000) in which individuals mask their negative mood with a temporary heightened mood caused by eating. It is often seen as a coping strategy to self-meditate and self-regulate in order to improve negative thoughts, attitudes and feelings and has been referred to as the ‘masking hypothesis’ (Ogden, 2012)

Often foods which provide pleasure, such as chocolate, for those who consider their intake to be excessive, any pleasure experienced is short lived and is accompanied by feelings of guilt (Macdiarmid et al)

Question 45

Stormer et al

Answer 45

Not all people exposed to media show body dissatisfaction, highlighting a role of internalisation