Food attitudes, eating behavior, and the information underlying food attitudes

This research examined healthiness perceptions and how the information underlying food attitudes more generally relate to attitudes and behaviors. Participants completed attitudinal measures and various card-sorting tasks in which they rank ordered foods (pictures and/or nutrition labels) in terms of healthiness. Taste was found to be a stronger predictor of attitudes and past eating behavior than other information underlying attitudes (health, guilt, comfort). Furthermore, participants’ healthiness rankings of pictures were not correlated to rankings of the corresponding nutrition labels, suggesting that when determining a food's healthiness, participants do not rely on (or are not aware of) the actual nutritional makeup.