Department of Psychology, Macquarie University.
Psychol Bull. 2017 Jan;143(1):53-90. doi: 10.1037/bul0000065. Epub 2016 Sep 12.
There are 3 motivations for studying the psychological correlates of habitual diet. First, diet is a major but modifiable cause of morbidity and mortality, and dietary interventions could be improved by knowing the psychological characteristics of consumers of healthy/unhealthy diets. Second, animal studies indicate that diet can impair cognition, stress responsiveness, and affective processing, but it is unclear whether this also happens in humans. Third, certain psychological traits are associated with obesity, but it is not known whether these precede and thus contribute to weight gain. Although many psychological correlates of diet have been identified, the literature is highly dispersed, and there has been no previous comprehensive narrative review. Organized here by psychological domain, studies linking diet with individual differences in perception, cognition, impulsivity, personality, affective processing, mental health, and attitudes, beliefs and values-in healthy adults-are reviewed. Although there is a growing literature on the psychological correlates of fruit/vegetable intake-the core of a healthy diet-consumers of unhealthy diets have characteristics that probably make them less responsive to education-based interventions. Diet may be a causal contributor to depression, and diet is consistently linked to impulsivity and certain personality traits. There are inconsistent and less explored links to perceptual, affective and cognitive processes, with several emerging parallels to the animal literature. Impulsivity and personality traits common to obese individuals also occur in lean consumers of unhealthy diets, suggesting these may contribute to weight gain. Diet-psychology correlates remain understudied even though this could significantly benefit human health. (PsycINFO Database Record
有三个研究习惯性饮食的心理相关性的动机。首先，饮食是发病率和死亡率的一个主要但可改变的原因，通过了解健康/不健康饮食消费者的心理特征，可以改进饮食干预措施。其次，动物研究表明，饮食会损害认知、应激反应和情感处理，但尚不清楚这是否也发生在人类身上。第三，某些心理特征与肥胖有关，但尚不清楚这些特征是否先于体重增加并因此促成体重增加。尽管已经确定了许多与饮食相关的心理因素，但文献高度分散，以前没有进行过全面的叙述性综述。本文按心理领域组织，综述了将饮食与感知、认知、冲动、个性、情感处理、心理健康和态度、信念和价值观方面的个体差异联系起来的研究，这些研究对象都是健康成年人。尽管关于水果/蔬菜摄入量（健康饮食的核心）的心理相关性的文献越来越多，但不健康饮食消费者的特征可能使他们对基于教育的干预措施的反应不那么敏感。饮食可能是导致抑郁的一个原因，而且饮食与冲动和某些个性特征一直存在关联。与感知、情感和认知过程的关联不一致且研究较少，与动物文献有一些新出现的相似之处。肥胖个体共有的冲动和个性特征也存在于健康饮食的瘦消费者中，这表明这些特征可能促成体重增加。即使这可以显著有益于人类健康，饮食与心理学的相关性仍然研究不足。
