How Beliefs Shape What We Consider When Choosing What to Eat

What determines which foods we consider? One factor, certainly, is what we like to eat, and if liking what we eat were the sole relevant outcome of food consumption, there would be little to say about incomplete consideration. However, diet quality has important, well-documented effects on health outcomes (as well as other important considerations, such as differential environmental impact). Close to 75 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, which increases the likelihood that the individual will experience one or more serious non-communicable diseases. A food’s healthiness is an important consideration for many people when making food choices, but, unlike tastiness, healthiness is more difficult to assess. Products carry nutrition facts panels displaying myriad pieces of information about nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Whereas you get a sense of whether you like the taste of something within milliseconds, health outcomes occur over long timescales and innumerable meals, making it nearly impossible for an individual to identify the contribution of any particular food item to their current health status. In our attempts to make sense of the healthiness of foods, many of us form beliefs about the attributes of foods—which may include nutrients, such as how much protein is in a product; production practices, such as organics; or the absence of something, e.g. gluten free products—to help us categorize foods as healthy or not. Thus, even if we’re all trying to make healthy food choices, we may base those health judgments on different combinations of criteria, leading us to different beliefs about which products are healthy.