Topic Summaries

Explanations for food preferences

A-Level > Psychology > AQA > A-Level Psychology Topic Summaries > Eating behaviour > Explanations for food preferences
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Addiction

  • Evolutionary explanation: humans evolved food preferences that increased survival chances.
    • Sweet foods are high in energy which made them highly valuable for hunter-gatherers (👥 Buss, 1998), salt is essential for cell functioning and hydration balance, and fat-rich foods are calorie-dense, making them vital during food scarcity (👥 Cordain et al., 2000).
    • Neophobia: reluctance to try new foods protects against poisoning. 👥 Birch (1999) found it most strong in early childhood when children are more vulnerable.
    • Taste aversion: adaptive mechanism to avoid harmful foods after illness. 👥 Garcia and Koelling (1966) demonstrated this in rats who developed an aversion to sweetened water after it had been paired with nausea, showing a biological preparedness to associate taste with sickness, which would have reduced the risk of consuming toxic foods.
      • This explanation can be criticised as reductionist because while it explains universal preferences, it neglects the significant role of culture and learning.
      • In modern contexts, these once adaptive preferences for sweet and fatty foods may now be maladaptive, contributing to rising obesity rates – an example of ‘evolutionary mismatch.’
  • Role of learning:
    • Social influences: research shows that social influences are crucial: parents shape their children’s food habits both through modelling their own diets and through reinforcement (👥 Birch, 1980). For example, if a parent consistently eats vegetables and praises the child for doing so, the child is more likely to develop a preference for them. Peer influences also become important in adolescence when conformity to friends’ eating habits is strong.
    • Cultural influences: also shape food preferences by determining which foods are available and socially acceptable. 👥 Rozin (1988) found that cultural norms influence not only which foods are eaten, but also attitudes toward them. Additionally, exposure to global media has been shown to increase desire for high-calorie ‘Western’ diets, particularly among young people (MacIntyre et al., 1998).
      • Unlike the evolutionary explanation, this learning-based account successfully explains cultural differences in diet. However, it may underestimate the role of biological predispositions, such as the universal preference for sweetness, suggesting that a full explanation must consider both innate and learned influences.
      • It is hard to separate social from biological influences since they both interact.

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