Children's Nutritional Judgments: Relation to Eating Attitudes and Body Image

To determine if middle school students use simplified cognitive heuristics with regard to nutritional judgments, a sample of 136 sixth and seventh grade students responded to a series of questions about nutrition, eating attitudes, and body image. Evidence for simplified strategies was obtained. App...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health communication 2005-01, Vol.18 (3), p.275-289
Main Authors: Rasnake, L. Kaye, Laube, Emily, Lewis, Meghan, Linscheid, Thomas R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescents
Attitudes
Body Image
Child
Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena
Cognition & reasoning
Diet
Eating behaviour
Feeding Behavior - psychology
Female
Heuristics
Humans
Male
Middle school students
Nutrition
Self image
Surveys and Questionnaires
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:To determine if middle school students use simplified cognitive heuristics with regard to nutritional judgments, a sample of 136 sixth and seventh grade students responded to a series of questions about nutrition, eating attitudes, and body image. Evidence for simplified strategies was obtained. Approximately 50% of the students showed dose insensitivity (i.e., something harmful in large amounts should be avoided in small amounts) and categorical thinking (i.e., foods are either good or bad). Further, 16% of participants selected a fat-free diet as the healthiest. Higher scores on the measure of disordered eating attitudes (Maloney, McGuire, & Daniels, 1988) were associated with stronger endorsement of dose insensitivity and low- or fat-free diets. No relation between body image dissatisfaction and nutritional judgments was found. Educators continue to need to better understand what leads individuals to adopt the cognitive heuristics of dose insensitivity and categorical thinking that can lead to inaccurate nutritional judgments and to address these mistakes in nutritional information programs. Researchers also need to determine if these judgments are reflected in actual dietary behaviors.
ISSN:1041-0236
1532-7027
DOI:10.1207/s15327027hc1803_5