Why we eat what we eat: Social influences on food intake

Britta Renner
University of Konstanz

How many total decisions do you make about food and beverages in one day? Would you 
be surprised to find out that on average we make more than 200 food-related decisions 
in a day? Some of the decisions and actual behavioral eating responses you made in a 
day, you will probably remember (e.g., what you chose to eat for lunch), while other 
decisions will probably went on unnoticed (e.g., how long and how fast you ate). This 
example shows that our eating behavior is not actually driven by deliberation upon the 
consequences of our behavior, but is automatic, cued by stimuli in the environment 
resulting in actions unaccompanied by conscious reflections. In particular, social cues 
such as social images associated with specific food items can automatically impact eating 
behavior. A series of studies is presented which demonstrates how social cues such as 
social exclusion and social images impact food intake within children and adults. For 
example, the valence of the social image implicitly associated with food impact 
spontaneous food intake. Inducing a positive social image induces an ‚indulge’ effect 
whereas an image of a popular peer eating healthily induces a hand-off effect. This 
demonstrates that ‘behavioral signatures’ such as eating are often not uniform across 
time and situations but fluctuate in a compensatory and complementary manner 
triggered by environmental cues. How healthy eating behavior can be facilitated 
effectively through implicit non-health-related interventions will be discussed.