Human Nutrition

REASONS FOR EATING ❚
considerable hurt. They may use food rejection to
express feelings of anger, jealousy or insecurity,
or to gain attention. Children who have to follow
a special diet for health reasons may be particularly
at risk of this type of behaviour. Using food
as a weapon can become a habit maintained into
adult life. Sometimes this weapon is turned
against the self, in situations where food intake is
chaotic (see Chapter 8).
Figure 2.3 Psychological need as a trigger to eating.
Psychological need
Eating is a pleasurable activity, and can satisfy
some of our internal needs. Boredom provides a
major incentive to eating and may fill many
empty hours for people. Depression or anxiety
can also make people turn to food for comfort.
This is believed to stem from the reassurance
given by food provided by parents to children,
linking positive feelings about parental care
and love with the food. It is important that the
‘food as comfort’ response is not made too frequently,
as it is likely to result in overweight,
often with associated emotional problems (see
Figure 2.3).
We may also offer food to people to comfort
them; for example, a child who has fallen and
been hurt may be cuddled and then offered
something to eat (often a sweet or biscuit). After
a funeral, people may come together to share
food. This acts as a comforting gesture for both
those providing the food, as well as those eating
it. If we remember that provision of food is linked
with loving and caring, it is easy to see how
rejection of the food by the intended recipient
can be hurtful and painful. This happens with
young children who are learning about food, but
can become manipulative and cause their carers
Sensory appeal
The way in which a food stimulates our senses
by its appearance and smell, taste and texture
may also increase our desire to eat it. Most
people claim that the taste of the food is the
prime consideration, although for adolescents
the appearance also rates highly.
The visual appeal of the food, although
important to attract the eye, can be quite
deceptive, however, and gives no indication of
nutritional value. Most sighted people would
be very wary of accepting and eating a food
they could not see. Our expectations of the taste
of a food are prepared by its appearance – we
expect an orange-coloured drink to have a
sweet, citric taste; anything else might lead to
rejection. The food industry is well aware of the
importance of the ‘correct’ visual stimulus and
uses a range of colorants to produce an acceptable
finished appearance. However, the numbers
of these are less than they were 10–20 years
ago as consumers become more concerned about
safety aspects, and are increasingly prepared
to buy foods with a more ‘natural’ colour (see
Figure 2.4).
The smell of the food must also meet our
expectations. We use this to detect if food has
‘gone off’ and we are enticed to eat by pleasant
aromas. We can recognize many foods purely
from their smell. Smell and taste interact to produce
the flavour of the food; if the sense of
smell is lost; for example, when suffering from
a cold, food may seem tasteless. The number of
taste buds is highest in children, who have them
on the insides of the cheeks and throat, as well
as over the surface of the tongue. These begin to
decrease from adolescence and are considerably
reduced by the age of 70.
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