The Design Lab, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA.
Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA.
Adv Nutr. 2022 Aug 1;13(4):992-1008. doi: 10.1093/advances/nmab156.
The study of food consumption, diet, and related concepts is motivated by diverse goals, including understanding why food consumption impacts our health, and why we eat the foods we do. These varied motivations can make it challenging to define and measure consumption, as it can be specified across nearly infinite dimensions-from micronutrients to carbon footprint to food preparation. This challenge is amplified by the dynamic nature of food consumption processes, with the underlying phenomena of interest often based on the nature of repeated interactions with food occurring over time. This complexity underscores a need to not only improve how we measure food consumption but is also a call to support theoreticians in better specifying what, how, and why food consumption occurs as part of processes, as a prerequisite step to rigorous measurement. The purpose of this Perspective article is to offer a framework, the consumption process framework, as a tool that researchers in a theoretician role can use to support these more robust definitions of consumption processes. In doing so, the framework invites theoreticians to be a bridge between practitioners who wish to measure various aspects of food consumption and methodologists who can develop measurement protocols and technologies that can support measurement when consumption processes are clearly defined. In the paper we justify the need for such a framework, introduce the consumption process framework, illustrate the framework via a use case, and discuss existing technologies that enable the use of this framework and, by extension, more rigorous study of consumption. This consumption process framework demonstrates how theoreticians could fundamentally shift how food consumption is defined and measured towards more rigorous study of what, how, and why food is eaten as part of dynamic processes and a deeper understanding of linkages between behavior, food, and health.
研究食物消费、饮食和相关概念的动机多种多样，包括了解食物消费如何影响我们的健康，以及我们为什么选择吃某些食物。这些不同的动机使得食物消费的定义和测量变得具有挑战性，因为它可以在近无限的维度上进行指定，从微量营养素到碳足迹到食物准备。这种挑战因食物消费过程的动态性质而加剧，其中感兴趣的潜在现象通常基于随着时间的推移与食物反复互动的性质。这种复杂性不仅突显了需要改进我们测量食物消费的方式，还呼吁理论家更好地指定食物消费作为过程的一部分发生的内容、方式和原因，作为严格测量的前提步骤。本文的目的是提供一个框架，即消费过程框架，作为理论家角色的研究人员可以使用该框架来支持对消费过程的更严格定义。通过这样做，该框架邀请理论家在希望测量食物消费各个方面的从业者和能够开发测量协议和技术的方法学家之间架起桥梁，这些协议和技术可以在消费过程得到明确定义时支持测量。在本文中，我们证明了这种框架的必要性，介绍了消费过程框架，通过一个用例来说明该框架，并讨论了现有的使该框架得以应用的技术，以及更严格地研究消费的扩展。该消费过程框架展示了理论家如何从根本上改变食物消费的定义和测量方式，以更严格地研究作为动态过程一部分的食物的内容、方式和原因，以及行为、食物和健康之间的联系。
