Eating Behaviour Flashcards
Learn about some dank food innit, like my cheesecake.
Describe early
Diets: your answer should include: what humans were, food preferences, environmental reason for the preference.
Early humans were hunter gatherers. Their diet included animals and plants that were apart of their natural environment.
Preference for fatty foods would have been adaptive for early humans, because conditions in the environment would have made energy vital to stay alive to get the next meal
Describe ‘taste aversion’
A learned response to eating a spoiled or potentially toxic food. When tasted the animal will avoid eating the food that has caused illness or tastes to similar to the food that has caused an illness.
Research evidence for taste aversion:
Garcia et al 1955: First to study taste aversion in a lab setting. Rats who had been made ill through radiation shortly after eating saccharin developed an aversion very quickly to the saccharin due to the association to illness.
Outline Neophobia:
The reluctance to try anything enw or unusual, naturally occurring reaction to protect animals from being poisoned by consuming potentially harmful foods.
Evaluation for evolutionary preferences for food: Limitations based on ancestors’ dietary preferences: Point 1:
Some foods sought after by our ancestors is very harmful to us in modern day society, such as saturated animal fats which would have been very desirable to them due to the desire to have high fat, high calorie meals due to not knowing when the next meal would come.
Evaluation for evolutionary preferences for food: Limitations based on ancestors’ dietary preferences: point 2:
Krebs 2009: pointed out a mismatch between evolved dietary preferences (i.e. sugar and fat) vs our modernised society.
Many global health issues were caused by a result of this mismatch e.g. sugar and type 1 diabetes, fat and obesity.
Evaluation for evolutionary preferences for food: support for the development of preference for sweet foods:
Study which showed that infants do not need an early exposure to sugar in order to have a preference or desire for it.
Several cases from cultures which do not have experience in sweet foods or sugar, when in connection with a culture which does have sugar they do not reject the food due to the sweetness of it, therefore shows a preference for this food is likely innate. (Inupiat people) . Study by Bell et al 1972
Evaluation for evolutionary preferences for food: Support for the development of preference for sweet foods point 2:
Infants display a desire to ingest sweet foods, this is shown by behaviour which shows a desire to ingest e.g. smiling or licking lips in order to ensure that the food will be ingested. Suggests an innate response to sweet food.
Evaluation for evolutionary preferences for food: Real world application: Taste aversion:
Cancer patients are given a novel food prior to chemotherapy, this is because it can cause gastrointestinal illness.
When the illness is paired with food consumption it can lead to aversion to the taste of foods eaten before the therapy.
Therefore the novel food prevents this from occurring because the patient’s body blames the novel food rather than any normal food they may have had prior to the therapy.
Developed after Bernstein and Webster gave patients novel food in 1980 to cause aversion to the novel food and not normal food. Led to the development of this as a standard procedure. (It is called the scapegoat technique)
Evaluation for evolutionary preferences for food: Support for neophobia:
It has logical, adaptive advantages - we can assume that there is a strong genetic component for this characteristic.
Investigated by Knaapita et al in 2007- It measured the food neophoia using the Neophobia scale questionnaire. Sample of 468 adult female twins: paired 21 mz and 257 dz.
Heritability found to be about 67% . Supports neophobia as an evolved behaviour.
Cognitive theory of anorexia nervosa: Name 3 characteristics of the cognitive behavioural model:
- Involves reinforcement from others
- Involves influence of cultural ideals
- Just a model of AN
Cognitive theory of anorexia nervosa: characteristics of transdiagnostic model:
- No reinforcement
- Focus on self control
- A model for all eating disorders
