What the board expects you to know:

Factors influencing attitudes to food and eating behaviour, for example, cultural influences, mood and health concerns

Explanations for the success and failure of dieting

In modern times in the Western World we have come to take food very much for granted.  It is mostly cheap and plentiful.  However, this is a relatively new development.  In relatively recent times and before the onset of modern farming methods food was often scarce.  In the mid nineteenth century (1845 to 1852) over a million people starved to death in Ireland and another million or more emigrated (mostly to the USA) to avoid starvation as a result of the Great Potato Famine. 

This part of the topic considers factors that influence our attitudes to food and covers issues such as mood, wealth, culture, social class, health concerns and medical (mis) information.  Based on the Board’s specification we will group these under their chosen headings of culture, mood and health concerns:

Cultural Influences

What is food?

Different cultures view different things as food.  Our very idea of food is to some extent determined by the culture in which we are brought up. 

A few obvious examples for starters: 

In the West we tend not to regard insects as food.  In most parts of the World insects are an important constituent of the diet. 

Hindus do not consider the cow as food and Jews the pig.

We know the French see horses and frogs as food, whereas the British don’t

In South America hamster is popular and in Korea a dog isn’t just for Christmas (dinner)!

So what determines and maintains these biases towards certain food stuffs?

How various preferences originally came about is difficult to say, though some may be practical; not eating pig in a hot climate and many are undoubtedly religious.  The Bible (Leviticus) lists many creatures that can or cannot be eaten!

Maintenance of eating behaviour within a culture or society is easier to explain. 

As children we tend to eat what our parents eat, partly of course because they prepare it for us.  However, as we grow up we tend to express a preference for similar foods to our parents.  So here we have SLT in action.

The media and advertising clearly have a huge impact too.  In recent years there has been concern about food advertising aimed at children because of the possible harm it is doing to their health. 

Advertising creates associations between food and good times or positive outcomes: mealtimes with the oxo family, Special K and slim waistlines, yoghurt and healthy guts and the less said about Hagan Das and its associations the better J

However, we create associations of our own.  Some of these may be positive, such as various lagers and drunken nights out or being curled up in front of the fire on a cold night with a cup of Bovril (probably less likely).  Food is very susceptible to associations and for excellent biological reasons.  The first time I tasted whiskey (New Years Eve 1979) I was ill the next day.  In all fairness to the single malt in question it was unlikely that the whiskey had been the trigger for the next day’s events, rather the lager that had preceded it.  However, humans like all species, make very rapid associations between food and illness.  This can potentially be life-saving and is certainly life-promoting.

Garcia’s sickly rats

In a series of experiments on rats Garcia demonstrated on-trial learning.  He would give the rats novel solutions to taste (for example saccharin).  He would then expose the rats to radiation that would subsequently make the rats sick.  He found that even though the sickness occurred many hours after the novel food had been tasted that the rats still developed an immediate aversion to the substance.  They seemed predisposed to make associations between food and sickness and after only one trial.

Points to bear in mind:

Usually with classical conditioning many trials are needed.  Think of Little Albert’s learned fear of white rats or Pavlov’s dogs learning to associate food and bell.  These rats only had to associate taste and sickness once for the link to be made. 

Up until Garcia it had also been assumed that the UCS (e.g. food) would need to be presented at the same time as the CS (e.g. bell) for the association to be made.  Garcia showed that with food the CS (sickness) may occur many hours after the initial presentation of the food and the conditioning would still occur. 

It is clear that this mechanism is biologically useful.  Sickness can be fatal.  If an animal is sick after consuming a food stuff for the first time it is best avoided in the future. 

To this day I still find the smell of whiskey nauseating.  The beer that probably triggered the illness is still acceptable.  I had many prior experiences of consuming beer and had learned to associate this with pleasant outcomes. 

Schema for ‘food’

British troops expected something that looked like jam to be sweet and fruity, not salty and fishy.  Caviar therefore did not fit their existing schemas for ‘food.’

Through experience we develop a template for what constitutes food.  During WW!! British troops were given caviar, much favoured by our Soviet allies.  Caviar, for the inexperienced is black, liquidy and is spread on bread.  The British Tommy had a schema for such a substance… he called it ‘jam.’  Jam was sweet and contained blackberries or similar juicy fruits.  Caviar tasted salty and contained fish eggs.  It didn’t fit the Tommys’ schemas and this ‘fish jam’ was not viewed as food!

Culture doesn’t just determine what we eat, but also when we eat, where we eat, how we eat and with what we eat:

Mealtimes

Different cultures and nationalities eat at different times of the day.  In the UK we have an early breakfast, lunch around midday and an evening dinner, unless we’re working class, in which case we have an earlier dinner followed by tea!  Mediterranean countries generally tend to eat later, particularly the evening dinner which in some countries may not be eaten until 10pm or later. 

Research suggests eating together as a family can have a number of benefits.  The food tends to be healthier as we eat more servings of essential foods such as fruit and vegetables and fewer unhealthy fatty foods.  Families that eat together are also more likely to eat breakfast.

Where we eat

Restaurant

In the 1970s about a third of the family’s food budget was spent on eating outside the home.  By the 1990s this had risen to just under a half. 

Eating out generally results in consumption of less healthy foods since restaurants tend to offer fewer healthy options. 

School

School meals were first introduced in the late nineteenth century and were designed to combat malnutrition that was common in many of the poorer children of the time.  In the 1940s it was made compulsory for schools to offer free meals to children from poorer backgrounds.  From then until the 1980s little changed.  Few choices were available and the fare tended to be pretty basic stuff.  Spam fritters were a favourite at my school (though probably not with the students) and desserts tended to be stodgy affairs; lots of crumbles and steamed puddings with lashings of lumpy pink custard!  Don’t mention semolina! 

Then in the 1980s the then Conservative Government under Maggie sold off the council run kitchens to the lowest bidders.  Those able to produce the cheapest meals were awarded the contracts.  Choice increased but quality plummeted.  Guidelines on nutritional value were relaxed and the emphasis instead placed on fast, cheap and convenient.  Then in 2004 Jamie Oliver attempted to rescue the situation by doing away with the turkey twizzler and introducing salads.  Unfortunately, although quality has undoubtedly improved, over three quarters of secondary schools still have vending machines offering less healthy options.   Kubik et al (2003) believes eating unhealthy food at school has an adverse effect on our general eating habits and intake of healthy foods at home.

Home

Eating at home continues to decline.  When we do eat at home it is more likely to be a pre-packed convenience meal that takes a few minutes in the microwave.  With most families now being one-parent or having both parents working, time spent on preparation of fresh food has dropped significantly.

Large portion….’yes!’

Supersizing began in the USA but has become popular in other Western countries, particularly in the UK.  In many fast food outlet the options now may be limited to medium, large or extra large… small having gone that way of the dodo. 

As I write this…in the middle of a recession with food outlets declining and many closing, the last twelve months has seen one noticeable exception.  New kid on the block, Taybarns, has bucked the trend and shown a 3% increase in turnover.  Taybarns is apparently based on the American Golden Corral ‘all you can eat’ model.  It offers a wide choice of dishes based on a variety of cuisines.  So as you move along the 34 metre serving area you can pick up Pizza, Mexican, Chinese, Indian… as well as fish and chips.  The controversial aspect however, is the ‘eat as much as you like’ approach which is said to be encouraging greed and obesity.  Customers pay a flat rate of £5.99 (or £7.99 in the evening) and can help themselves over and over again.  The recorded average number of platefuls eaten by Taybarns' customers is 3.37.

Young and Nestle (2002) reported that the average portion size of fries, burgers and soft drinks had increased between 2 and 5 fold in the last few decades. 

Some US restaurants even offer ‘BIG KID MEALS.’

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