Describe the factors that drive our food choices:

Social - Social factors that lead us to choose foods are pressures of acceptance. In celebration of one’s cultural foods, they may be offered and to refuse brings pressures. These pressures of accepting others heritage or cultural foods can be viewed as rude if declined so people often engage in social eating.

A lot of times socializing with friends, family, or coworkers involves food. Often times we choose to eat alongside others; it’s rather typical. There are also celebrations of rights and customs within different cultures where eating is a main part of the celebration. For instance, I was just at a friend’s wedding and after they made their vows and were pronounced husband and wife we had a buffet style dinner. Another instance, I’ve been to too many funerals but in any case afterwards everyone seems to go out and eat. 

Psychological – Psychological factors that lead us to choose foods are comfort foods, weight, and positive or negative associations. If someone is upset they may start eating familiar foods which causes a release of endorphins, the brain’s pleasure chemicals. The release of endorphins is a gratifying experience and people like to repeat those choices in order to feel good. Then we have a person’s weight, where they may have the mindset that they cannot choose certain foods because they will gain weight. This is a fear of obesity known in the medical world as baryphobia ("Fear of obesity," 2008). Baryphobia tends to lead to eating disorders like anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, thus the result in choice of foods is very little if at all. Now lastly of the psychological factors, people tend to attribute positive or negative associations. A positive may be that which you receive from comfort foods (endorphin release) or a negative may be a bad reaction or allergy from a food. Sometimes we associate these memories when we have the option to choose our food.

Philosophical – Philosophical factors that lead us to choose foods are our values and beliefs (Sizer & Whitney, 2011). According to Sizer & Whitney (2011), they may meet your religious traditions, square with our political views, and honor the environmental ethic. A religious tradition may encompass our choice in abstaining from certain foods. For instance, I believe during Passover, those who engage abstain from eating meat on Fridays, for a period of time.

The last two, where philosophical factors like political views and environmental ethics lead us to choose foods can go hand in hand. There are many celebrities that support vegetarianism or veganism and are against eating meat. There are many non-celebrities that are against eating meat, also.

            

To conclude this blog and part of the final, there are many different approaches as to why a person will choose a certain food. For myself, I have a sweet tooth and this dictates a lot of my choices in foods. It is very hard to live with as sweets are not good in the amounts I eat them. I have switched gears slightly because of psychological factors being my weight and the thoughts that surround my appearance. 

Erin Christine Dorn