Decision Making in Eating Behavior: State of the Science and Recommendations for Future Research
- PDF / 120,733 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 77 Downloads / 139 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Decision Making in Eating Behavior: State of the Science and Recommendations for Future Research Wendy L. Johnson-Askew, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D. & Rachel A. Fisher, M.S, M.P.H., R.D. & Amy L. Yaroch, Ph.D.
Published online: 7 November 2009 # The Society of Behavioral Medicine 2009
Abstract Background The National Institutes of Health Division of Nutrition Research Coordination, the National Cancer Institute, the National Health Lung and Blood Institute, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases convened a scientific workshop entitled "Decision Making in Eating Behavior: Integrating Perspectives from the Individual, Family, and Environment” in April 2008 Purpose/Methods The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the workshop. Results The common themes that ran throughout the conference were as follows: (1) Initiating behavior differs conceptually from sustaining behaviors; (2) The intersection of biology, genetics, and environment (physical, political, economic, and social) is where eating behavior occurs; (3) Marketing and advertising influence eating behavior influence; and (4) sometimes, seemingly unrelated policies influence eating behavior. Conclusions Additional research is needed. Keywords Decision making . Eating behavior . Food-related decisions
W. L. Johnson-Askew (*) : R. A. Fisher National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland e-mail: [email protected] A. L. Yaroch The Center for Human Nutrition, Omaha, Nebraska
Introduction Eating behaviors are extremely complex and difficult to characterize, especially since they are driven by a number of factors including individual (e.g., sociodemographics, interpersonal, psychosocial, and economics) as well as environmental and policy factors. Public health researchers who study dietary behaviors often spend a considerable amount of time developing and evaluating interventions geared towards altering these behaviors, sometimes without fully understanding or taking into account what is driving these behaviors. For example, in the case of dietary intervention studies, some studies seek to educate study participants about healthier food choices and measure how much their dietary behavior(s) change over the course of the intervention. This type of intervention makes the assumption that the participants are selecting unhealthier fare because they lack knowledge of what constitutes healthy or unhealthy food. However, although knowledge is sometimes a “predictor” of behavior change, this is not always the case [25, 39]. Additional understanding of facilitators and barriers to individual food choice and decision making patterns associated with these choices is necessary for the development of interventions to target individuals where knowledge of behavior does not necessarily facilitate behavior change. In an attempt to understand the state of the science with regard to decision making and individual food choice, the National Ins
Data Loading...
