Discuss Attitudes to Food and Eating Behaviour (8 & 16 marks)

Culture is a big factor in eating behaviour and most cultures have their own ideas on which foods are allowed to be eaten, when and how they are eaten and how the food should be prepared. These are usually traditional ideas passed on through generations.

Lawrence et al (2007) conducted a study which supported the idea that there are cultural differences in eating behaviour by using discussion groups to investigate factors affecting the eating behaviours of ethnic minorities. He found that although Bangladeshi and Pakistani women took pride in their traditional cooking, they often ate western junk food when time was short. This shows that although people do like to stick to their own traditional eating behaviours they are often influenced by other cultures as well and take on board some of their eating behaviours.

Supporting research into the idea that there are cultural differences in attitudes towards food was also carried out by Lesham (2009) who conducted a series of studies comparing Bedouin women who live in the desert to those who live in an urban setting and both of these to Jewish women. He found that both groups of Bedouin women had very similar eating behaviours but very different to that of the Jewish women. This shows that eating behaviour is linked to culture as the two groups of Bedouin women share a culture but not where they live and they still have very similar eating behaviour but different to those of another culture.

However Lesham’s study only takes into account the nurture effects and ignores the nature part of the nature vs. nurture debate. It has ignored the fact that nature could have an effect on eating behaviour as we have to adapt to live in our environment and eat what we need to survive, especially in the EEA. This argument would be put forward by evolutionary psychologists and should be taken into account alongside the nurture side of this debate when drawing conclusions on our Eating behaviours.

The findings from Lesham’s study are not fully generalizable to the whole population as it was carried out on a small number of ethnic groups which is not a representative sample of people across the world. This therefore affects the population validity of the study.

The validity is also affected by the fact that Lesham’s study was carried out on all women which is a huge gender bias and means that results cannot be fully generalised to the whole population.

Stefansson (1960) also showed that a cultural difference in eating behaviours may exist by finding that Copper Inuits who live on a diet of flesh and roots only and in isolation from other people were disgusted by the taste of sugar. This is very different to the western world, lots of whom have a lot of sugar in their diets. This shows a cultural difference as they have such different ideas about the taste of a food type between two different cultures. 

A key point which undermines the argument is the idea that eating behaviour is affected by culture can be seen to be very one directional as it ignores other explanations such as evolutionary explanations which are also likely to have some influence on our eating behaviours. Therefore a more well-rounded approach may need to be looked at before any conclusions are drawn about influences on eating behaviour. 

Another Factor influencing our eating behaviour is mood. For example when people are sad they tend to eat more or ‘comfort eat’ to make themselves feel better.

Garg et al (2007) conducted a supporting study to show that mood affects eating behaviour by showing 38 participants either a sad movie or a happy movie and observing their eating habits throughout. All participants were given the same amount of popcorn at the start of the movie and how much each person had eaten was measured at the end. It was found that those watching the sad movie ate on average 38% more popcorn than those watching a happy movie. This supports mood as a factor affecting eating behaviour as different eating behaviours were shown between people experiencing two different moods.

However Garg’s study does have some problems with extraneous variables as it is impossible to know how much the participants had eaten before the study, whether or not they actually liked popcorn, and their usual eating habits. All of these things could have affected how much they ate rather than it being their mood. This reduces the validity of the study.