Herrero Lucia, McCrea Cindy E
Social Determinants of Cognition, Behavior, and Health Lab, Department of Psychological Science, Boise State University, Boise, ID, United States.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jul 6;14:1212778. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1212778. eCollection 2023.
Food taste and health perceptions are of particular interest for their implications on food choice. Most food choice studies experimentally control for hunger via a set preload or fast.
To explore how hunger may interact with these perceptions to impact food decisions, we compared taste and health perceptions of sweet and savory obesogenic food items among hungry or satiated participants with varying restrained eating tendencies.
In our sample of 232 adults ( BMI = 25.9; age = 36.4 yrs), highly palatable foods were perceived as tasty but unhealthy. Tastiness ratings were high, consistent across restrained eating groups, and unassociated with hunger. Perceptions of health, however, were impacted by the interaction of restrained eating group and hunger. Amongst hungry participants only, a graded association between restrained eating group and perceptions of health emerged for both food types. Specifically, hungry and highly restrained eaters viewed sweet foods as 2.8x healthier and savory foods as 2.1x healthier than their satiated counterparts.
Our data suggest that hunger predicts differential health perceptions, but not tastiness ratings, among restrained eaters. We argue that the generalization of food perception data-especially among different eater types-may be limited if the continuum of hunger level is experimentally constrained. Therefore, hunger is a critical dynamic to consider in explorations of food perceptions and eating behavior in restrained eaters.
食物口味和健康认知因其对食物选择的影响而备受关注。大多数食物选择研究通过设定的预负荷或禁食来实验性地控制饥饿程度。
为了探究饥饿如何与这些认知相互作用以影响食物决策，我们比较了饥饿或饱腹的、具有不同饮食节制倾向的参与者对甜腻和咸味致胖食物的口味和健康认知。
在我们232名成年人的样本中（体重指数=25.9；年龄=36.4岁），高度可口的食物被认为美味但不健康。美味评分很高，在饮食节制组中保持一致，且与饥饿无关。然而，健康认知受到饮食节制组和饥饿的相互作用影响。仅在饥饿的参与者中，对于两种食物类型，饮食节制组与健康认知之间出现了分级关联。具体而言，饥饿且高度节制饮食者认为甜食比饱腹的同龄人健康2.8倍，咸味食物健康2.1倍。
我们的数据表明，饥饿预示着饮食节制者对健康认知的差异，但对美味评分没有影响。我们认为，如果饥饿程度的连续体在实验中受到限制，食物认知数据的普遍性——尤其是在不同饮食类型者之间——可能会受到限制。因此，在探索饮食节制者的食物认知和饮食行为时，饥饿是一个需要考虑的关键动态因素。
