38 Food Choice
by 70 percent, and baked beans by 8 percent. Similarly, when Edwina Curry,
then junior health minister in the UK, said on television in December 1988
that “most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now infected with
salmonella,” egg sales fell by 50 percent and by 1989 were still only at
75 percent of their previous levels (Mintel, 1990). Similarly, massive pub-
licity about the health risks of beef in the UK between May and August 1990
resulted in a 20 percent reduction in beef sales. One study examined the
public’s reactions to media coverage of “food scares” such as salmonella,
listeria, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and compared it to
their reactions to coverage of the impact of food on coronary heart disease.
The study used interviews, focus groups, and an analysis of the content
and style of media presentations (Macintyre et al., 1998). The authors con-
cluded that the media have a major impact upon what people eat and how
they think about foods. They also argued that the media can set the agenda
for public discussion. The authors stated, however, that the public do not
just passively respond to the media “but that they exercise judgement and
discretion in how much they incorporate media messages about health and
safety into their diets” (p. 249). Further, they argued that food choices are
limited by personal circumstances such as age, gender, income, and family
structure, and that people actively negotiate their understanding of food
within both the micro context (such as their immediate social networks)
and the macro social contexts (such as the food production and informa-
tion production systems). Halford et al. (2004) used an experimental design
to evaluate the impact of exposure to food-related advertisements. Lean,
overweight, and obese children were shown a series of food-related and
non-food-related adverts, and their snack food intake was then measured
in a controlled environment. The results showed that overall the obese
children recognized more of the food adverts than the other children and
that the degree of recognition correlated with the amount of food consumed.
Furthermore, all children ate more after exposure to the food adverts than
the nonfood adverts. Similarly, King and Hill (2008) showed children adverts
for healthy or less healthy foods and measured their hunger, food choice,
and product recall. No effects were found for hunger or food choice, but
children could remember more of the less healthy than the healthy foods.
In summary, social learning factors are central to choices about food.
These include significant others in the immediate environment, particularly
peers, parents, and the media, who offer new information, present role
models, and illustrate behavior and attitudes which can be observed and
incorporated into the individual’s own behavioral repertoire.