32 Food Choice
preference for sweet tastes may be modified by familiarity. Furthermore,
given the enormous cultural diversity on food preferences, it is generally
accepted that food choice following birth is more complex than simply a
matter of innate preferences. This has been clearly argued by Rozin, who
stated that “there is no doubt that the best predictor of the food preferences,
habits and attitudes of any particular human would be information about
his ethnic group...rather than any biological measure that one might
imagine” (1982).
Food choice is the result of a complicated set of processes which have
been categorized in a range of different ways. Early research (Yudkin, 1956)
argued that food choice was influenced by physical factors (e.g., geography,
season, economics, and food technology), social factors (e.g., religion, class,
education, and advertising), and psychological factors (e.g., hereditary, all-
ergy, and nutritional needs). Shepherd (1989) described the factors influenc-
ing food choice as either external (the type of food, the social and cultural
context) or internal to the individual (personality, sensory factors, cogni-
tions). One large-scale survey of food choice conceptualized the factors that
influence food choice as nine different motivations (Steptoe, Pollard, and
Wardle, 1995). These were sensory appeal, the costs to health, convenience
of purchasing and of preparation, weight control, familiarity of the food,
mood regulation, the natural content of the food, and ethical concerns about
manufacture and country of origin. This chapter focuses on psychological
influences, and describes this literature in terms of the core theoretical
approaches which have been used to explore food choice. These are the
developmental processes, the role of cognitions, and psychophysiological
factors (see figure 3.1).
Developmental Models of Food Choice
A developmental approach to food choice emphasizes the importance of
learning and experience and focuses on the development of food prefer-
ences in childhood. An early pioneer of this research was Davis (1928, 1939),
who carried out studies of infants and young children living in a pediatrics
ward in the US for several months. The work was conducted at a time when
current feeding policies endorsed a very restricted feeding regimen, and
Davis was interested to examine infants’ responses to a self-selected diet.
She explored whether there was an “instinctive means of handling...the