Psychosocial Influences On Food Choices During Adolescence: A Literature Review
Description: After exploring a wide range of psychological research and theories, I wanted to write my own scientific review paper on adolescent psychology. With the guidance of my mentor Dr. Natasha Duell, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in strengths-based approach to study social, cultural, biological, and psychological influences on adolescent decision-making and risk taking, I completed my research review on the psychosocial influences on food choices during adolescence. Please note that this paper is modified for TSP’s digital formatting and the formatting of the original version is slightly different.
Feel free to check out Dr. Duell’s website: https://natashaduell.com/
Abstract
This literature review investigates the various psychological and social impact of food choices on adolescents. The paper focuses on the influence of social networking sites (SNS) or social media and social interactions and norms when adolescents make dietary changes. The impact of food on mental well-being is also evaluated according to these psychosocial factors. Research studies show that time spent on SNS increases the chance of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Social interaction with family is one of the key factors that affect adolescents' food preference and choices; when eating with friends, at times adolescents might choose to consume foods they do not regularly consume due to conformity and fear of judgment. Consuming unprocessed foods and a diet composed of various types of healthy foods positively impacted mental health and reduced the severity of some mental disorders. This paper concluded that food choices have a significant impact on adolescents’ physical and psychological health.
Keywords: adolescence, food choices, dieting, social networking sites, social environment, social media, mental health
Psychosocial Influences On Food Choices During Adolescence
During adolescence, the brain remodels and undergoes many changes that impact one's social and psychological development. One significant aspect is the food choice adolescents make to maintain their health and mental well-being. As the teenage years are spent making new choices and taking risks, adolescents are susceptible to making diet choices that only benefit them in the short term and do not consider the long term consequences compared to adults. Investigating the factors that influence adolescents’ food choices can lead to a better understanding of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia and the reasoning behind why many adolescents choose to change their diet. This literature review examines the relationship between social and psychological factors behind food choices during the adolescence period, focusing on the use of social networking sites (SNS), the interactions with one’s environment, and the impact of food on mental well-being.
Social Networking Sites (SNS) and Eating Disorders
With the wide use of social networking sites (SNS) such as social media, adolescents are susceptible to information about dieting and body image. Although some information about diets or body transformations posted online may be helpful, many of these SNS posts increase body dissatisfaction amongst adolescents that initiates a change in their already healthy and suitable diet. This may lead to a high chance of eating disorders. Based on a research study done by research scientists at the University of Windsor, results showed that increased time and use of SNS (such as Instagram and Facebook) was associated with lower body image, lower self-esteem, and higher eating disorders symptoms and concerns (Santarossa & Woodruff, 2017). Similarly, another study that focused on pre-teenage girls aged 10 to 12 years found that increased time spent on SNS such as MySpace and Facebook led to increased dieting and internalization of the thin ideal (Tiggemann & Slater, 2014). The use of SNS and social media plays an important role in influencing adolescents’ eating behavior and patterns such as eating less or increased dieting and low body confidence. Hence, dieting is influenced by SNS and is often practiced in harmful ways amongst adolescents such as the motive behind changes in eating behavior is due to seeing other people on social media with more “ideal” bodies. If these unhealthy eating behaviors persist and continue, adolescents are at high risk for eating disorders. In another study involving middle school adolescents, social media use was associated with disordered eating behaviors such as excessive exercise and skipping meals (Wilksch et al., 2019). There is a clear relationship of SNS negatively influencing adolescents’ satisfaction with their bodies, leading to disordered eating.
Social Environment and Food Choices
In addition to SNS being a major factor in adolescent eating behavior and especially in disorders, there are many other social influences that externally affect an adolescent’s diet. According to a research study done by registered dietitians and doctors, Story, Neumark-Sztainer, and French (2002), there are four main influences in adolescent eating behaviors: individual or psychosocial, social environment (family and friends), physical environment (schools and stores), and macrosystem (media, marketing, and cultural norms). While some adolescents do not spend a lot of time on SNS or social media or spend sufficient time to be negatively affected and make changes to their diet, there are still two important and main remaining factors that can affect eating behavior: social environment and physical environment. The study found that an adolescents’ family is one of the most significant influences in eating behavior because they are the provider of food and the influencer of food attitudes, preference, and values (Story et al., 2002).
Furthermore, social norms play a powerful role around the foods one chooses to eat and how much one eats as they are “implicit codes of conduct” one follows to avoid social judgments (Higgs, 2015). The social norm around eating can be related to the greater concept of social conformity which is heightened during adolescence as they want to fit in with others (e.g. their friends) in their social environment. Additionally, another study found that adolescents tend to consume non-traditional foods outside of their household as the consumption of traditional foods open them to ridicule (Brown et al., 2015). This shows that a fear of judgment and ridicule are significant factors in determining what an adolescent chooses to consume and with whom they choose to consume with.
However, family and interactions with people are not the only social factors that affect food choices. A recent study found that sensory appeal (taste), mood, price, availability, and ease of preparation are also important factors that affect teenage food choices and were more important compared to weight control and health motivation (Daly et al., 2023). Hence, taking in consideration factors unrelated to social norms and family interactions is also important when evaluating the social environment’s impact on an adolescent’s food choices. Overall, however, studies suggest that adolescents' social and physical environment directly impact their eating behavior and food choices.
Impact of Food on Psychological Well-Being
Adolescents’ food choices directly affect their long term health and mental well-being. A systematic review found that a good-quality diet is correlated with better mental health compared to an unhealthy diet with poorer mental health in children and adolescents (O’Neil et al., 2014). This shows the importance of maintaining a healthy diet throughout one’s childhood but also through adolescents and preventing disorder eating behaviors as it correlates with mental health. Furthermore, a more specific study found that fish consumption lowered the risk of and was associated with fewer new depression episodes for women (Smith et al., 2014). This shows the importance of specific foods on mental health as well as improving certain disorders such as persistent depressive disorder (or dysthymia) in this study. Moreover, a study found that adolescents who eat the Mediterranean diet or a diet that contains sufficient fruits, nuts, and legumes can be beneficial to reducing psychosocial health problems compared to adolescents who skip breakfast or consume excessive amounts of sweets and carbohydrates (Alfaro-González et al., 2023). These findings suggest that eating unprocessed foods such as fish, fruit, nuts, and legumes can have a significant impact on adolescents’ mental well-being, psychological health problems, and mental disorders.
In addition, with whom adolescents eat with or if they eat alone also impacts their mental health and food intake. In a study conducted on Japanese elementary school children, results show that children who eat breakfast with their family less than once a week and those who eat breakfast on the weekend alone had a higher presence of borderline or abnormal mental health problems compared to those who eat breakfast everyday with their family (Kameyama et al., 2021). This study suggests that parents and guardians should strive to eat with their children everyday to improve their mental well-being or reduce the severity of mental strain. Overall, food choices have a significant impact on adolescents' psychological well-being and mental health.
Conclusion: Interdependent Psychosocial Factors on Food Choices
The impact of food choices on adolescence involves the interaction and intersection of various factors. This literature review investigated the psychosocial factors that affect adolescents’ food choices and eating behavior which at times ultimately results in eating disorders. For social factors, SNS and social media significantly influences adolescents’ food choices and diet changes. For psychosocial factors, family, friends, and social norms play a key role in determining the types of food adolescents will and want to consume. For psychological factors, food choices will ultimately determine and impact not only adolescents’ physical health but also their mental well-being. While this review examined a wide range of factors that determine adolescents’ food choices, it did not look at how these factors might affect adolescents in the long run. Hence, for future research, investigating the long term effects of certain eating behavior could be significant toward the types of actions that should be taken to prevent unhealthy eating habits or disordered eating.
References
Alfaro-González, S., Garrido-Miguel, M., Martínez-Vizcaíno, V., & López-Gil, J. F. (2023, June 27). Mediterranean Dietary Pattern and Psychosocial Health Problems in Spanish Adolescents: The EHDLA Study. Nutrients, 15(13), 2905. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15132905
Brown, C., Shaibu, S., Maruapula, S., Malete, L., & Compher, C. (2015, December 1). Perceptions and attitudes towards food choice in adolescents in Gaborone, Botswana. Appetite, 95(95), 29-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.06.018
Daly, A. N., O'Sullivan, E. J., Walton, J., Kehoe, L., McNulty, B. A., Flynn, A., & Kearney, J. M. (2023, October 1). Determining the food choice motivations of Irish teens and their association with dietary intakes, using the Food Choice Questionnaire. Appetite, 189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2023.106981
Higgs, S. (2015, March 1). Social norms and their influence on eating behaviours. Appetite, 86, 38-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.10.021
Kameyama, N., Morimoto, Y., Hashimoto, A., Inoue, H., Nagaya, I., Nakamura, K., & Kuwano, T. (2021, September 2). The Relationship between Family Meals and Mental Health Problems in Japanese Elementary School Children: A Cross-Sectional Study. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 18(17), 9281. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/9281
O’Neil, A., Quirk, S. E., Housden, S., Brennan, S. L., Williams, L. J., Pasco, J. A., Berk, M., & Jacka, F. N. (2014, October). Relationship between diet and mental health in children and adolescents: a systematic review. Am J Public Health, 104(10), e31-42. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4167107/
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Story, M., Neumark-Sztainer, D., & French, S. (2002, March). Individual and Environmental Influences on Adolescent Eating Behaviors. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102(3), 40-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-8223(02)90421-9
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Wilksch, S. M., O'Shea, A., Ho, P., Byrne, S., & Wade, T. D. (2019, December 3). The relationship between social media use and disordered eating in young adolescents. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 53(1), 96-106. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.23198
