The unhealthy = tasty belief is associated with BMI through reduced consumption of vegetables: A cross-national and mediational analysis
The unhealthy = tasty belief is associated with BMI through reduced consumption of vegetables: A cross-national and mediational analysis
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DOI：
10.1016/j.appet.2020.104639
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发表时间：
2020-07-01
期刊：
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Mukhopadhyay, Anirban
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Briers, Barbara;Huh, Young Eun;Mukhopadhyay, Anirban
肥胖是现代最大的公共卫生挑战之一，其患病率在全球范围内不断增加。由于发达国家的食物如此丰富，许多人每天都会多次面临短期口味欲望和长期健康目标之间的冲突。最近的研究表明，消费者经常根据他们对食品健康和美味的普遍看法来解决这些冲突。因此，这种外行信念不仅在食物选择方面发挥着关键作用，而且在体重增加方面也发挥着关键作用。在这项研究中，我们通过中介分析在六个国家表明，认为美味食物不健康的成年人（不健康 = 美味直觉，或“UTI”；Raghunathan、Naylor 和 Hoyer 2006）不太可能食用健康食物，因此体重指数 (BMI) 较高。在研究 1 中，我们在五个国家（澳大利亚、德国、香港、印度和英国）进行了一项横断面调查，发现对 UTI 的信念越强，BMI 越高，而这种关系是通过水果和蔬菜消费量的减少来调节的。所观察到的模式在西方和亚太国家样本中基本趋同。在研究 2 中，我们梳理了蔬菜与水果消费的中介作用，并通过使用 30 个月前的 UTI 信念指标来预测 BMI，解决了反向因果关系的问题。我们发现，蔬菜消费而非水果消费介导了尿路感染信念与体重指数之间的关联。我们的研究结果表明，人们对食物的普遍看法如何对全世界的饮食习惯和健康产生普遍而持久的影响，从而为文献做出了贡献。讨论了对公共政策和卫生从业人员的影响。
Obesity is one of the greatest public health challenges of modern times and its prevalence is increasing worldwide. With food so abundant in developed countries, many people face a conflict between desires for short-term taste and the goal of long-term health, multiple times a day. Recent research suggests that consumers often resolve these conflicts based on their lay beliefs about the healthiness and tastiness of food. Consequently, such lay beliefs can play critical roles not just in food choice but also weight gain. In this research, we show, across six countries and through mediation analysis, that adults who believe that tasty food is unhealthy (the Unhealthy = Tasty Intuition, or "UTI"; Raghunathan, Naylor, & Hoyer 2006) are less likely to consume healthy food, and thereby have a higher body mass index (BMI). In Study 1, we conducted a cross-sectional survey in five countries (Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, India, and the UK), and found that greater strength of belief in UTI was associated with higher BMI, and this relationship was mediated by lower consumption of fruits and vegetables. The observed patterns largely converged across the sampled Western and Asian-Pacific countries. In Study 2, we teased apart the mediating role of vegetable versus fruit consumption and also addressed the issue of reversed causality by predicting BMI with a measure of UTI belief taken 30 months previously. We found that vegetable consumption, but not fruit consumption, mediated the association between UTI belief and BMI. Our findings contribute to the literature by showing how lay beliefs about food can have pervasive and long-lasting effects on dietary practices and health worldwide. Implications for public policy and health practitioners are discussed.