Emotion
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Eating Behavior Lara LaCaille Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN, USA
Synonyms Eating habits; Eating practices
Definition Eating behavior is a broad term that encompasses food choice and motives, feeding practices, dieting, and eating-related problems such as obesity, eating disorders, and feeding disorders. Within the context of behavioral medicine, eating behavior research focuses on the etiology, prevention, and treatment of obesity and eating disorders, as well as the promotion of healthy eating patterns that help manage and prevent medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and certain cancers.
Description Eating behavior is complex; humans make hundreds of food decisions each day that are influenced by a variety of personal, social, cultural, environmental, and economic factors. What people eat and how much they eat has a
considerable influence on their health. An ecological model that considers the impact of individual factors, social environments, physical environments, and macro-level environments on food choices is useful in understanding the multitude of determinants of eating behavior. Intraindividual factors influencing eating behavior and food choice include physiological processes (e.g., hunger, satiety, innate preference for sweet foods, brain mechanisms) and psychological processes (e.g., learned food preferences, knowledge, motivations, attitudes, values, personality traits, cognitive processes, self-regulation). The social environment has also been shown to have a substantial effect on eating behavior. Eating behavior is shaped indirectly through observing others and internalization of food rules, as well as directly (i.e., one eats more in the presence of others than when alone). The physical environment, including availability of foods, the context in which foods are provided, and the external cues, such as proximity to food, salience of food, packaging, plate/serving size, and variety of food assortments, have all been shown to affect the type and amount of food eaten. Finally, macrolevel environments, including economic systems, food and agricultural policies, food production and distribution, food marketing, and cultural norms and values, may have a more indirect yet powerful impact on food choices and eating behavior. The research on determinants of eating behavior has largely emphasized intraindividual variables, whereas there is considerably less known about the environmental influences and the interaction
M.D. Gellman & J.R. Turner (eds.), Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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between these. In particular, there is a need to conduct multilevel research, among diverse subgroups, using better measures, in order to better understand the mechanisms involved in eating behavior (Larson & Story, 2009).
Cross-References ▶ Obesity
References and Readings Baranowski, T., Cullen, K., & Baranowski, J. (1999). Psychosocial correlates of dietary intake: Advancing dietary
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