Conditioned Food Preferences

People eat an enormous variety of plants and animals. Historically, what people have eaten is usually a matter of what is available and even if it is not very acceptable to the palate. A lifetime of eating certain foods conditions people to desire some foods over others. The choices that people make of foods to eat are largely due to patterns of conditioned behavior learned from parents and foods served at schools or in other places.

The availability of food among a culture may historically have been very limited. For example, if the desert-dwelling Bedouin drink camel or goat milk and eat dates, it is very much a matter of availability of a few foods. However, if a person who previously had to live off a poor subsistence diet were to suddenly be presented with the opportunity to eat from the enormous variety of food for sale in contemporary food stores, then it may take some time but the individual could expand his or her diet to include many foods. When people from poor rural areas of the world who have been lean because they were almost malnourished move to modern urban areas, they are confronted with enormous food choices. They may, because of prior conditioning, stay with a simple diet.

The foods that people eat are in large part due to their food consumption training. For example, eating savory foods versus bland food may be due more to eating habits that have conditioned the individual to prefer spicy foods to bland foods (or vice-versa).

Recent physiological studies have begun to explore the reasons why people prefer certain foods. Some foods are chosen because they are “comfort” foods. Comfort foods are those that produce pleasant feeling of comfort. For example, research shows that males [Page 164]prefer as comfort foods hearty dishes that are warm—dishes such as steaks, casseroles, and soups. Females, in contrast, prefer comfort foods that are more snack-like in quality. These include items such as chocolate or ice cream. Young people prefer snacks.

Comfort Foods

Childhood experiences of comfort foods can become set for a lifetime. For example, a family in the 1950s that went to drive-in movies with a thermos of ice water and a paper grocery bag filled with home-cooked popcorn on a regular basis could easily have late-middle-aged adults today who microwave popcorn before watching a movie at home.

Psychological influences that become deep-seated consumption patterns of behavior can affect the dietary habits of children for a lifetime. If they grew up in a family in which almost the only time food was consumed was at the family dinner table where everyone ate the same things, they were conditioned to eat what was served.

However, if children are given a “children's diet” that is different from adults, they will be conditioned to a different dietary habit. Many children become conditioned to eating fattening foods when there are given items such as processed deep-fried chicken or pizza. The item may taste good to the child, who then will demand that this type of diet be continued indefinitely despite its negative health effects.

...