This article is about eating preferences; how our surroundings, social interactions, cautious thinking and related ideas affect the choices we make on what will appear underneath the cloche, would it be plain water, soft drink or wine poured into our glassware that we cling on a Sunday evening in the yellow lamp lights?
Why and how does tradition and media play a vital role in what we choose to eat? If most people prefer to go for Coke Zero, do we rethink before taking a sip of Coca Cola? If yes, why? Does our past negative incidents alter our choices in the fore-coming future? Sometimes a thought of a meal that caused illness makes us feel queasy, why and how it does so forms the basis of this article. Role of Learning Theories in Forming Eating Preferences Learning Theories Observational Learning. In this field of learning we learn by observing others around us. Albert Bandura states that every individual has a direct relation with its environment.
We use our senses to absorb the gestures or qualities of a person we aspire to become, and while we are doing so the other person is busy imitating his own inspiration so it creates a non-ending circle of inquisitive beings observing their siblings, parents, role models, celebrities, or friends to be more like them. Though most of the times we are unaware of the fact that our behavior has been influenced by our environment or our behavior is influencing our environment. E.g. Children learn a great deal through observational learning. This explains why there is a common nature to all the members of the family as aggressive environment tends to make the children aggressive and calmness makes them calm.
There are 4 stages of Observational learning listed as follows: 1 Attention; the observer pays attention to the model. The level of imitation depends on the level of emotional arousal and expectations.
2 Retention; the observer must observe closely enough to remember and recover the memory. This depends on how the observer stores the memory and how many times he rehearses it physically or mentally.
3 Initiation; Observer must be intellectual enough to reproduce the act 4 Motivation; without motivation the observer cannot recreate the act. Association with Eating Preferences: Eating preferences may be acquired through observing others, rather than being innate. Humans often learn what is good or not good to eat from those around them (e.g. parents and peers).
Parents have a large influence on food preferences, as they buy and serve the food that young children eat. Children desire to eat what their friends or elder siblings prefer to eat. Parents reinforce children for eating certain foods (operant conditioning). Children may also learn their food preferences through social learning. They may observe and imitate their peers, or their preferences may be shaped by media advertising. Media plays a vital role, setting some basic foods as the custom of a particular area and enabling more people to eat it.
Our natural characteristic is to find the best for ourselves and when we see someone happy with what they eat on television, or have in a restaurant, we prefer to eat it too to achieve the same kind of satisfaction and happiness by eating what they eat and how they eat. Operant Conditioning. In this conditioning the consequence is related to the decision of an individual.
This is a learning that takes place regarding the rewards or punishments of the decision taken. The present decision is being influenced by the future and the assumptions made on what might happen. B.F. Skinner is known as the father of Operant Conditioning who believed that classical conditioning or observational learning were not enough to explain the behavior of an individual. The key to his theory is reinforcement.
A reinforcer strengthens the desired response. Behavior that is positively reinforced will reoccur; intermittent reinforcement is particularly effective. The Information should be presented in small amounts so that responses can be reinforced. Reinforcements will generalize across similar stimuli producing. These certain types of Operant conditioning are listed below.
1 Reinforcement (increased action); this could be negative or positive .E.g. Appetitive stimuli following correct behavior is positive while removing noxious stimuli following correct behavior is negative.
2 Punishment (decreased action); this could be positive or negative. E.g. noxious stimuli following wrong behavior is positive while removing appetitive stimuli following behavior.
3 Extinction; It occurs when a behavior that had been reinforced is no longer effective with either positive or negative reinforcement. Association with Eating Preference: In terms of operant conditioning, young individuals are often directly reinforced for their food preferences, mainly by parents and older siblings. They provide the child with rewards for eating certain foods, in the form of praise, encouragement or punishment (‘if you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding’).
However, it is still difficult to establish a preference (e.g. for green vegetables) in children using rewards. OC is where you are rewarded/punished directly for your behavior. You begin to associate the reward with the behavior or the punishment with the behavior therefore you repeat or avoid a certain action or eating a particular meal which might have made you ill in the past, caused some sort of trauma or you think it will make u gain weight or lose weight if you want to gain it.
Classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is also known as Pavlovian conditioning. It refers to the type of learning in which one element is paired with the other and a connection is formed between E.g. when food is paired with a neutral stimulus like bell, the next time the dog hears the bell ring he would salivate before even food is served to him.
There are certain types of Classical conditioning; 1Delay conditioning: In delay conditioning, the Conditioned stimuli is presented and is overlapped by the presentation of the Unconditional stimuli. For example, if a person hears a buzzer for five seconds, during which time air is puffed into their eye, the person will blink. After several pairings of the buzzer and the puff, the person will blink at the sound of the buzzer alone. This is delay conditioning.
2 Trace conditioning: During trace conditioning, the Conditioned stimuli and Unconditional stimuli do not overlap. Instead, the Conditioned stimuli begins and ends before the Unconditioned stimuli is presented. The stimulus-free period is called the trace interval or the conditioning interval. Association with Eating Preferences. One form of classical conditioning is flavor-flavor learning. We develop a preference for a new food because of its association with a flavor we already like. Because of our innate preference for sweetness, we learn to prefer many new foods by sweetening them.
For example, porridge and yoghurt both become immediately preferred after sugar is added to them. According to flavor-flavor learning principles, this association eventually leads to liking of the new food on its own. Flavor-flavor learning can explain both food preferences and aversions. But if it is paired with an aversive taste, then it will be rejected. The evidence is much stronger for the rejection scenario then it is for the acceptance one. E: For example, Baeyens et al (1996) found that paring an untired food with a soapy flavoured chemical called Tween led to a long-lasting aversion to the food. E: This suggests that flavour-flavour learning may be less crucial in food preferences than other learning mechanisms. For instance, there is substantial evidence that repeatedly feeding a child a new food will eventually lead to a preference for that food, without the need to sweeten it first. L: This suggests that classical conditioning is much more efficient in forming food aversions than preferences.
Examples from life to explain the influence of these theories All three of these theories have affected me since childhood molding my decisions, making me think twice, and making me addicted to a certain flavor. As a child my mother used to make us sweet dishes and I believe due to positive reinforcement I still love to eat sweet dish. My eating preferences have been influenced widely because of an illness I faced in 6th Grade; I had jaundice and had to stay at home for over a month, the doctor told that eating fries from vendors or eating food in the open must have caused this disease.
As a result, after so many years I still am cautious to not eat anything from the vendors, anything in the public place or anything without washing my hands. As for the observational learning, I have always paid attention to what is “in” these days, what most people eat and how they eat it.
I particularly admire the way British eat food, their delicacy and sophistication is flawless. Sometimes I observe the way Pakistanis eat rice, with their hands which I find unhygienic. When talking about the Classical conditioning, I recall the time I spent in the hostel when the bell used to ring and food was being served. We all used to rush to the dining tables and at once our moods changed in a positive way at the sound of the bell.
In the present time, I observe people holding slushes and shakes and I wonder what does the particular color slush tastes like so I buy it the next day, the next time I see the same person I am reminded of the tastes of the slush and thus a craving to buy it again. Cultural impact on food preferences Food is a vital for surviving. The food we eat forms major parts of our body is assists us in performing various physical function that require a lot of energy.
The key to maintain health is to have a balanced diet which has led to author to study the food consumption patterns of the different provinces in Pakistan. Food consumption pattern depends on two things, to estimate food expenditure and to estimate the share of food items. Food consumption is dependent on the age gender unlike the old studies.
Adult equivalence is used to find food pattern. In Pakistan the food consumption mostly depends on the income and fluctuates as the income increases or decreases. Studies show that poor families spent more on food. Government of Pakistan regulates the price of food items that are in demand. With the population of Pakistan increasing at a tremendous rate it is important to not depend on imported food items. Research has been made in the country regarding food consumption.
Resources are diminishing gradually exerting pressure on the agricultural system of various countries. The aim of the study is to highlight the food resources while balancing the demand and the supply. Food consumption in the four provinces is studied by the data resources regarding the two aspects. It is found that milk and cereals have the highest budget in the four provinces.
Each province has different food items that have the highest expenditure. Cereals are the major food items in the households of Pakistan. Milk has the highest expenditure in Punjab while Cereals have the lowest expenditure in Balochistan. Influence of Pakistani culture on one’s eating habits. Eating habits have been greatly influenced by the Pakistani culture.
One big example of it are the wedding ceremonies, where crowds of people are served with tremendous amounts of food mainly chicken, naans, sweet dish, kabbabs. Ever since our childhood chicken has been served at weddings as an honor and will be served in the future to maintain the traditions. Moreover, it is a habit to eat parathas on Sunday mornings made by the lady of the family.
Amongst teenagers it is common to eat junk food especially pizza and burgers. In the summers it is a custom to drink lassi. People in the village tend to eat with hand. The best things about Pakistani families is that they respect food and do not throw it away, they rather give it to the workers or maids. Rooti has the “josh” (energy) and satisfaction which no other food item can fulfill for Pakistanis.
As Pakistan is an Islamic state so drinking of wine or any hard drink is not common and people avert from doing so which has made non-Islamic families think of hard drinks as notion of disrespect as well. Chai (tea) is a priority in most families and no evening can be made more pleasurable than with a cup of warm tea served with biscuits in the lawn while the sun sets.
