Eating Behaviour

Eating Behaviour

1. Attitudes to food

   • Social learning - parents model eating behaviour for children
     • Brown & Ogden - Correlation between parent/child snacking, eating motivation & body dissatisfaction
     • MacIntyre et al - media impacts food attitudes, but behaviour limited by personal circumstances
     • Meyer & Gast - positive correlation between between peer influence and eating disorder. Likeability most influential
     • Doesn't consider evolution, natural preference for fatty and sweet
     • Gender bias - studies only on women
       • Homosexual men more at risk than hetrosexual
   • Culture - bodily dissatisfaction more common in white mid-upper class
     • Powell & Kahn - bodily dissatisfaction more in white women than blacks/asians
       • Certain foods not eaten due to religion
       • Striegel-Moore et al - more drive for thinness in black girls than whites.
       • Mumford et al - Bodily dissatisfaction more in Asian school children than whites
     • Ball & Kenardy - 14,000 Australian immigrants, longer in Australia, more preference for native foods
     • Dornbusch et al 7,000 American teens. Mid-Upper class females more drive for thinness
       • More likely to be dieting to achieve this
         • Acculturation effect - adopting behaviour patterns of surrounding culture
       • Story et al - American higher class students greater bodily satisfaction and less weight control behaviour
     • Difficult to generalise findings, some from clinical populations and some non clinical
       • Hard to draw causal factors
   • Mood
     • Craving sweet, starchy foods when upset, explained by classical & operant conditioning
       • Garg et al - Watching a sad film had 36% more popcorn consumption than a happy film, where more grapes were eaten
       • Can become unresponsive or not work
         • Parker et al - repeated use of chocolate only prolonged negative mood, not removing it
         • Inneffective
     • Bulimics have lower mood on binging days
       • Wegner et al - low mood before & after binging
         • Difficult to see reinforcing qualities
           • Wedig & Nock - reinforcement found
             • Social negative reinforcement - avoiding people
             • Intrapersonal positive reinforcement - increase strength of positive emotion
       • Low mood precedes binging
     • Stress can decrease eating behaviour
       • 84/154 students eating less main response
       • Oliver & Wardie 73% students stress increased snacking

2. Explanations for the success/failure of dieting

   • Restraint theory - restricting what you eat will cause weightloss
     • Kirkley et al - 50 women, restained eaters had fewer calories than unrestrained eaters
     • Rodin et al - obesitity cause beliefs & weightloss motivation important predictors of weightloss
     • Disinhibition - loss of restraint control, leading to overeating
     • Wardle & Beales - obese women in 1/3 groups. Restrained group ate more than exercise or control group
       • Restraint an obesity treatment, but overeating & obesity can cause depression. A failure unable to control weight
     • Cannot explain how restraiend anorexics don't overeat
     • Park et al - Asian adults more prone to obesity than Europeans
       • Harder to diet
       • Misra et al - greater central fat mass
     • Lacks scientific credibility, much is based on personal accounts. Memory not 100% accurate. Assesment not objective
   • Boundary model - dieting failure due to increased distance between hunger & satiety
     • Biopsychological explanation - body has a set point maintained by eating. Dieting emposes cognitive boundary
     • Takes longer to feel satiated so more food consumed
     • Herman & Polivy - restrained eaters consumed more when convinced they'd be shocked
     • Herman & Mack - Non dieters with high calorie preload ate less than non preloaders. Reverse in dieters
   • Ironic processes of mental control - seeing food as forbidden can cause you to want it more
     • Wegner - Suppressing thoughts makes food more attractive
     • Some people may be born fat. High levels lipoprotein lipase (LPL) makes body better at calorie storage
   • Boredom - People dislike repeated experiences. Sticking to a diet can be hard
     • Development of anti diet programmes (weightwatchers), regulation of eating by hunger & satiety signals, not restriction which is ineffective
   • Theory of planned behaviour
     • Williams et al - motivation style predictive of weight loss and weight motivation
     • Kiernan et al - people dissatisfied with body more likely to lose weight.
       • Possibly due to high value on attractivness
     • Ogden & Mills - maintained weight loss initiated by life event
       • Criteria needed to be met
         • Behavioural model of obesity
         • Restriction in food choice
         • Reduction in benifits & function of eating
         • New ID as a thin person (reinvention)