Healthy Eating Information and Food Choices

The obesity rate amongst American university students has become an item of concern for many colleges and universities across the country. College students are heavily exposed to many unhealthy dietary trends, being reliant on the taste attributes of food for their food decisions, and have a lack of exposure to healthier food options at their campuses. The current study investigated whether providing education on healthy eating information in college students can promote healthy eating, such as a decreased influence of food taste attributes and an increased influence of food healthiness attributes in their food decisions. Fifty-six college students were recruited from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Participants were randomly assigned to the healthy eating information group (n = 29) and the control group (n = 27). Participants in the health-education group were taught healthy eating information by watching a ten-minute video clip that provided healthy eating information such as portion size and food calories. In contrast, participants in the control condition watched a ten-minute video clip that delivered non-food related information about solar energy. Participants were asked to rate 60 food items based on food healthiness and taste using the Computerized Food Rating and Choice Tasks (Lim et al., 2018) before and after health education. Linear regression models were fitted to examine whether taste and health attributes predicted unique variance in each participant’s food preferences. Results showed that the influence of taste attributes was significantly decreased in participants’ food preferences after being taught healthy eating information. Participants in the control condition did not show this effect and demonstrated a significant increase of taste attributes in their food preferences. These findings suggested that providing education on healthy eating information in individuals could help reduce the influence of taste attributes in one’s food preference-making process. The findings of this study have implications for the implementation of health education in real-world settings for the promotion of healthy eating and the prevention of obesity.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology (UMKC)

Grantor

University of Missouri--Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Sotos, Jarrod Joseph

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ha, Oh-Ryeong

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/77966

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/77966