Sometimes it is difficult to separate food’s physiological function from its psychological effects. When food takes on too much importance for reasons other than nutrition, eating behavior may become abnormal and an eating disorder may result. Although eating disorders occur in both men and women, young women are most likely to develop eating disorders; in the United States, 3.2% of women between the ages of 18 and 30 are affected. The causes of these disorders are complex and multifaceted, but the emotional and sociocultural meaning that we place on food certainly plays a role.
From birth, food is linked with affection. Infants suckling while cradled in their mothers’ arms experience physical and emotional satisfaction. This is a time when we are comforted by physical contact and the assurance that we are loved and all our basic needs are being met. During childhood, the associations among food, affection, and comfort are reinforced. When a child is sick, “comfort foods,” such as hot tea and chicken soup, help him or her feel better. Sometimes these comfort foods may be sweet or fattening treats that, at least momentarily, make us feel happy As adults, the foods that comfort us in times of sadness. and emotional distress often are the same foods that brought us comfort as children. Throughout life, providing food is considered an expression of love and friendship. People serve lemonade or coffee when friends visit. Grandparents offer cookies and other treats when grandchildren visit. Conversely, refusing food can be interpreted as rejection of the person who offers it. We also use food to express or moderate moods and emotional states. When people are sad, they may eat a chocolate bar or a bowl of ice cream.
People choose foods that they associate with comfort, love, and security. Some foods are associated not only with love, but also with sexuality. For example, chocolate is a sensual treat that is a traditional Valentine’s Day gift. Food triggers our memories and the emotions that go along with them. Eating the same food today that you ate at a time earlier in your life can remind you of that time or experience. For example, eating a food your mother often served may give you the same sense of comfort and security you felt at home as a child. Eating meal you once shared with a loved one on a special occasion may bring back the intense emotions you felt at that earlier time. In the same vein, a bad experience with food may create negative associations with certain foods. For instance, if you once became ill after eating a food, you may avoid that food for the rest of your life.
Food Defines Who You Are
Food is a part of our personal, socioeconomic, cultural, and religious identity. Sometimes, these identity messages are based on stereotypes. For example, the upper class may be associated with meals presented on fine china and served with a degree of ceremony. Some people may imagine sophisticated people eating rare, expensive foods, such as caviar and truffles. In contrast, some associate the lower social classes with frozen dinners in front of the television. We may assume that vegetarians are concerned about ecology and the environment, and that people who eat thick, rare steaks are macho. People sometimes choose certain foods to convey a particular image.
Food also can be used as a reward or a punishment. A well behaved child is given a cookie, whereas a “bad” child is sent to bed without dinner. For some of us, this association continues into adulthood. We consider ourselves “good” when we eat healthy foods and “bad” when we overindulge in greasy fast food. Food also is used to define relationships within a family or culture. Within most cultures, powerful individuals eat well. The head of the family (usually the father) gets first choice of foods. In some cultures, this tradition is even more extreme: The men get their fill before the women are allowed to eat. Food is an integral part of our ethnic and religious identity. People in Asian cultures eat rice at every meal, and Italians grow up on pasta. Indian cuisine is recognized by curries, and Mexican food by refried beans and tortillas. Food patterns and ceremonies are among the most ingrained of all cultural traditions. Almost every religion has dietary rules or restrictions.
Seventh-Day Adventists are vegetarians. Jews and Muslims do not eat pork. Sikhs and Hindus do not eat beef. Devout Jews follow kosher dietary laws. Catholics do not eat meat on Fridays during the season of Lent. Many religions have special foods to commemorate religious events or holidays. Muslims do not eat before sundown during the month of Ramadan in order to recognize the first revelation of the Qur’an (Koran). Jews eat the unleavened bread matzo during Passover to remember their ancestors’ flight from slavery in Egypt, which was too hasty to give them time to wait for bread to rise. Christians eat bread and drink wine during church services to commemorate Jesus’s Last Supper before his crucifixion.
Food and Social Interactions
Food is a focus of social interaction. At special events, it is symbolic and commemorative. We reward life’s accomplishments and celebrate marriages and anniversaries with food, and even mourn our dead with feasts. A professional success, a new job, or a graduation may be celebrated with a special dinner. And what would a birthday be without a cake? Specific foods define certain holidays, both religious and nonreligious. We eat turkey on Thanksgiving to remember a meal the Pilgrims shared with Native Americans.
Each of us associates holidays—such as Christmas, Easter, Passover, New Year’s, and Kwanzaa—with specific foods that are traditional within our families and culture. Food also is the centerpiece of everyday social interactions. We get together with friends for meals. The dinner table is often the center for communication within a family—a place where the experiences of the day are shared. Summer outings often center on a picnic or barbecue. This eating is not just for sustenance, but is social as well.
Why Do We Choose Certain Foods?
There are many reasons we choose to eat the foods we do. Sometimes, we eat a food simply because it is put in front of us. However, our choices also depend on our personal or cultural preferences, on what foods we heave been exposed to, what is socially acceptable, as well as which foods we consider healthy.
What Is Available
Availability is a major factor in determining what foods we eat.The foods available to a person or a population are affected by geography, socioeconomic factors, and health status. In underdeveloped areas, food choices may be limited to what is produced locally. In more developed locations, a greater variety is available due to the ability to store, transport, and process food that is grown and produced at distant locations. Even when foods are available in stores, they are not necessarily available to everyone in the population. Socioeconomic factors—such as income, education, and the availability of cooking facilities and transportation—affect the types of foods that people can choose.
People with low incomes must limit the amount of money they spend on food; choice is often based on what is on sale. If people do not know how to prepare a food, they are not likely to buy it. People who do not have a stove or microwave cannot cook some foods at home, so they are restricted to eating precooked or cold meals. A college student who does not have a refrigerator cannot store perishable foods. Someone without a car can purchase only what he or she can carry home on foot or while riding on a bus or subway.
Availability can be affected by lifestyle. Busy lives often leave little time to buy food and prepare meals. This may be a particular problem in single-parent families and in families in which both parents work. As a result, prepared foods, fast food, and restaurant meals have become a larger part of our overall diet. Health status also can affect the availability of food. People with food allergies, digestive disorders, and dental problems have limited food choices. People with diseases who require special diets are limited to foods that meet their dietary prescriptions.
What You Prefer
Availability affects what foods we have to choose from, but individual tastes and cultural, religious, and personal beliefs determine what we eat. A person’s preferences for taste, smell, appearance, and texture affect which foods are chosen and which are passed over. Personal beliefs also influence food choices; a vegetarian will not choose a meal that includes meat, and an environmentalist may not choose a food packaged in a nonrecyclable container.
Creatures of Habit
Your habits also are important factors in determining which foods you choose. The foods and meal patterns you are exposed to as a child influence which foods you buy and cook as an adult. For example, you most likely eat three meals a day and have specific types of foods at these three meals. For most of us, breakfast might include cereal, toast, or eggs, while lunch is made up of soup or sandwiches. Would it seem strange to you to have a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast or a bowl of cereal for dinner?
What Society Teaches Us
As children, we learn which foods are appropriate to consume under particular social circumstances. As we grow, peer pressure influences our food choices. A child may decide to try a new food because a friend eats it. A teen may change his or her diet friends, in other cases less. To impress a dining companion, we may choose foods different than those we normally would choose. Out of politeness, we also might eat foods that we typically avoid.
The products we see advertised on television and in magazines can influence the foods we choose. Often, the sales of food products are proportional to the money that companies spend advertising them. Unfortunately, many products that are the focus of advertising campaigns are high in fat, sugar, or both. A review of commercials during children’s television shows found that most were for foods high in sugar, fat, or salt.
What We Think Is Good for Us
Our ideas about a healthy diet affect our food choices. We may choose specific types of foods to try to lose weight. We may limit red meat intake to reduce our risk of heart disease, or purchase organic foods because we believe that pesticide exposure is harmful. Health concerns also sell products. Foods marketed to reduce the risk of cancer, lower cholesterol, or improve bone health sell well. For example, a campaign advertising the cholesterollowering properties of oats increased the sale of breakfast cereals by $1.5 billion in just two years.
Review
We eat food to meet our physiological needs, but food is much more. Food also is psychologically nurturing. It is part of our personal, social, cultural, and religious identity. It is an essential component of our social interactions. There are many reasons we choose to eat specific foods. Often, it is because certain foods are more available to us in light of geographic or economic factors. What is available, however, also depends on living conditions, lifestyle, and health status. The foods we choose are influenced by to fit in with peers. The amount of food we eat also is affected by social settings. In some cases, we eat more because we are with our personal preferences for taste, smell, texture, and appearance. We also may have preferences based on our culture and personal convictions. Habits, social factors, exposure to advertising, and our beliefs about nutrition and health also affect food choice.
Additional Boxes
Few foods are as universally desired as chocolate. It is offered as a reward, a treat, and an expression of affection. It is eaten for comfort and loved for its smooth texture, sweet taste, and sensual appeal. When it was first introduced to Europe in the fifteenth century, it was the food of royalty. Through the centuries, it has been hailed as everything from an antidepressant to an aphrodisiac.
What makes it so irresistible? It turns out that some people’s love of chocolate is not only due to its taste, but also to the effect it has on the brain. Eating chocolate leads the brain to produce compounds that dull pain and increase feelings of well-being. Chocolate also contains compounds that mimic the effect of marijuana. Dark chocolate contains more of these compounds than milk chocolate does, but scientists doubt that the amounts are great enough to have much effect. Even if we don’t get a “chocolate high,” chocolate may quicken the heart rate and make people feel alert and content because of the chemical stimulants it contains.
Phenylethylamine is a stimulant in chocolate that raises blood pressure and blood sugar levels, making us feel alert and happy. Chocolate also provides caffeine and caffeine-related compounds, which act as stimulants. So, there seems to be a physiological as well as a sensual basis for the “chocoholic” in most of us. No wonder Americans buy $5 billion of chocolate every year.
Fly Soup
How would you feel if you found a fly in your soup? Most of us would not be too happy; in our culture, we think of insects as contaminants, not food. This is not the case in many places around the world, however. Some societies rely on insects as a major source of dietary protein. Grasshoppers are eaten in Africa and are becoming popular in South Korea. Termites, which contain more protein per ounce than beef, are a common protein source in parts of Africa and Australia. Caterpillars and other insect larvae also are popular in parts of the world. In Mexico, caterpillars of the Giant Skipper butterfly are a delicacy, and in Africa, the larva of the Goliath beetle is collected from among the roots of the banana tree. Despite our aversion to eating insects, survival manuals point out that insects are a perfect choice when other food sources are not available. In 1995, when American fighter pilot Captain Scott O’Grady was shot down while flying over Bosnia, he survived in the forest by eating ants.
American culture has become a culture of speed and efficiency. Whether Americans are paying bills, putting gas in their cars, or eating meals, many focus on speed and efficiency. Gone are the days when the woman of the house spent hours shopping for and preparing a home-cooked meal that would be enjoyed by the whole family around the dinner table. Today, the “woman of the house” often holds down a full-time job, and spends her evening and weekend hours shuttling kids to soccer or violin practice.
The modern American lifestyle, with its working parents, single-parent households, and multiple after-school events, leaves little time for home-cooked meals. As a result, many Americans have come to rely on frozen meals, fast food, takeout, and dining out to get them through the week. Currently, about 41% of adults eat some type of commercially prepared meals three times a week. Fast food is the most popular choice; 25% of adults and 30% of children (4 to 19 years old) eat fast food every day. In 1970, the purchase of foods prepared away from home accounted for about 26% of Americans’ annual food budget; today, it accounts for 46%.
By Lori A. Smolin and Mary B. Grosvenor in the book 'Healthy Eating - Nutrition and Eating Disorders'- Chelsea House, Infobase Publishing, New York, 2011, p. 9-18. Edited and adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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