Attitudes To Food And Eating Behaviour Essay

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Discuss the role of one or more factors that influence attitudes to food Parental modelling is one explanation to eating behaviour; this is when children watch what their parents eat and the parents control what they eat. The second theory of eating behaviours comes from the media and the effects it has on what and when we eat. Both of the above factors fall under the umbrella of Social learning theory, this theory suggests that we develop or change our behaviour according to the rules/people in society. Brown and Ogden 2004 found consistent correlations between parents and their children in terms of snack food intake, body dissatisfaction and eating motivations, this shows us that the influence of parent and how they model their own food intake has a direct effect on how their children view and eat their own food. MacIntyre found that the media have a major impact both on what people eat and their attitudes to certain foods. However, the researchers also state that many eating behaviors are limited by personal circumstances such as age, income and family circumstances. Thus, people appear to learn from the media about healthy eating, but must place this information within the broader context of their lives. Ethnicity also plays a key role in our attitudes to the food we eat, this is because of individual differences and religion, for example Jews can only eat kosher meats this is a major factor in the freedom of food choice. The second point on Ethnicity is the acculturation effect this is when you adopt the behaviours of a culture because you have experienced it regularly, this can be see in a study carried out by Ball and Kenardy (2002) they studied more than fourteen thousand women between the ages of 18 and 23 in Australia. Their results showed that for all ethnic groups, the longer the time spent in Australia, the more the women reported attitudes and

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