Attitudes to food and eating behaviours

Social learning theory 

Parental modelling - Parents attitudes to food effect they children as they control foods bought and served within the home. 

Media effcts - Macintyre et al - The media has an impact on what people eat and their attitudes to food.

Social learning theory - A02

Brown & Ogden - Found consistent correlations between parents and their children in terms of snack food intake, eating motivations and body dissatisfaction. 

Social learning theory - AO3

Macintyre et al and media effects - eating behaviours are limited by age, income and circumstances. Thus people appear to learn about healthy eating but this info must be placed withing the boarder context of their lives. 

Health concerns 

These issues inc the conepts of a healthy diet, safety of food additives such as colouring and the inherent goodness of food itself such as food produced without the use of chemical hormones. 

Health concerns AO2 

UK GOV - Out of 900 children aged 7 to 16, 58% of them had no health concerns. 

42% of them of them had concerns with issues such as bird flu.

95% of them though eating healthy would make them healthy.

82% said eating healthy was personally important to them. 

79% said they had obtained healthy eating info from school.

Health concerns AO3

The data from the survey doesnt match the data on childhood obesity.

27% of children in the UK are overweight (2006). 

13% of them are clinically obese (2005).

Also adverts for sugary and fatty foods are colourful and associated with fun things. 

Cultural influences

Ethnicity - body dissatisfaction and eating concerns are related to the characteristics of white women.

Social class - A number of studies have shown body dissatisfaction, dieting and eating disorders are more common in higher class individuals. 

Cultural influences AO2

Ball & Kenardy - studied 14,000 women between 18 and 23 in Australia. For all ethnic groups the longer they spent in Australia the more the women reported eating behaviours like the women from Australia, 

Dornbusch et al - Studies 7,000 American adolescents and found higher class females had a greater desire to be thin.

Cultural influences AO3

Mumford et al - found incidences of bulimia was greater among asian school girls than white school girls. 

Striegel Moore et al - More evidence of a drive for thinness among black girls compared to white girls.

Story et al - found with a sample of American students that higher social class was related to greater satisfaction with weight and lower rates of weight control such as vomiting. 

Mood and eating behaviour

Binge eating - a temp escape from a negative mood, research shows individuals with bulimia compain of anxiety prior to a binge.

Comfort eating - the experience of eating junk food when feeling low. 

Mood and eating behaviour AO2

Davis et al - Self monitoring study - shows that one hour before a binge, bulimics had more negative moods than one hour before a normal meal.

Garg et al -  Those watching a sad film consumed 36% more popcorn than those watching an unbeat film. 

Mood and eating behaviour AO3 

Although binge eating offers immediate gratification, studies have reported a drop in mood immediately after the binge. Therefore it is unclear why this can be reinforcing to the individual. 

Parker et al - although chocolate has an antidepressant effect for some when consumed as an emotional eating strategy its likely to prolong the negative mood.