Food beliefs and food choices in adolescents

Focus of this paper will be on how adolescents choose from the many thousands of foods that are available to them in affluent societies. The complexity of the biological, cultural and social factors which can influence an individual's food selection makes this a difficult area of study. Also, even with an individual, food preferences are subject to change. Clearly, in a brief review it will not be possible to discuss all the many variables that can affect food selection, so the emphasis will be on recent experiments which have shown how individuals come to like or to dislike particular foods. After describing the acquisition of food preferences in children, the factors that have been found to be most influential in adolescents will be considered. Finally, examples of aberrant food beliefs and choices, as in eating disorders, will be discussed.