The Psychology of Nutrition

Psychology of Nutrition is the first book to take a consistent psychological approach to all aspects of the selection and consumption of foods and drinks. This approach is based on the author's ground-breaking theory of the cognitive integration of influences on ingestion, which brings together research evidence on the sensory physiological, cultural and interpersonal factors in the desire to eat and drink. The basis of the theory is that ingestive appetite is a learned response to a complex of cues from foodstuffs, the body and the social and physical environment. The volume starts with infant/caregiver interactions in feeding, and then moves on to consider how physical and social maturation in western culture affects attitudes to foods, concentrating on the phenomena of ordinary dieting and the extremes of disordered eating. The concluding chapters deal with the processes within the lives of individual consumers which can cause the same eating habits to form in different segments of society, and consider the potential of psychology in effective food technology, marketing, and governmental regulation. In a lucid and absorbing style, the author tackles questions concerning what goes on in eaters' and drinkers' minds about the foods and beverages they are consuming and explores the cultural meaning of the eating occasion in industrialized cultures. Psychology of Nutrition illustrates and integrates the diversity of behavioural nutrition and thereby consolidates a new field of fundamental and practical research in one unique resource.