Eating Behaviour - Division A

Division A - Eating behaviour

• Attitudes to food and eating behaviour
• explanations for the success and failure of dieting

Explanations of attitudes to food and eating behaviour.

• Social Learning
• Cultural Influences
• Mood and eating behaviour

Social Learning

• Parental Modelling:
• child observes parents behaviour.
• parental attitudes to food inevitably effect children as parents control food bought and served.
• research suggests an association between parents and child's general attitudes to food.
• Brown and Ogden (2004) reported consistent correlations between parents and their children in terms of snack intake, eating motivations and body dissatisfaction.
• Media Effects:
• role of SL is evident in the role of the media.
• MacIntyre et al. (1998) found the media impacted what people eat and also their attitudes to certain foods.
• however, researchers state eating behaviours are also limited by personal circumstances e.g. age, income and family circumstances.
• so, people learn about healthy foods from the media but must place this information within their lives.

Cultural Influences

• Ethnicity:
• research suggests body dissatisfaction and related concerns/disorders are more characteristic of white women than black or Asian (Powell and Kahn, 1995).
• Ball and Kenardy (2002) studied over 1400 women 18-23 in Australia. Results showed that for all ethnic groups, the longer time spent in Australia, the more the women reported attitudes and eating behaviours similar to those born in Australia.
• this is known as the acculturation effect.
• Social Class:
• a number of studies found that body dissatisfaction, eating behaviour and disorders are more common in higher-class individuals.
• Dornbusch et al (1984) surveyed 7000 american adolescents & concluded higher-class females had a greater desire to be thin & were more likely to diet to acheive this than lower-class were.
• Goode et al. (2008) used data from 2003 Scottish Health Survey & established that income was positively associated with healthy eating.

Mood and Eating Behaviour