Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Psychology of food choices: challenges for healthy dietary behavior in...
Highlights
Coordinator
This task will also unveil psychological factors pertaining to health, positive, clinical psychology and psychosomatics affecting eating behaviours to broaden the current evidence and the intervention options to reduce eating related disorders (e.g., food neophobias) and promote wellbeing.
Building on Tasks 7.1.1. to 7.1.4. this Task will develop behavioural models to profile and predict consumer’s choices explaining the mechanisms of change facilitating the adoption of healthy and sustainable diets and consumption patterns.
Development of an expanded pilot model combining established and un-covered psychological/ psychosocial internal and external regulatory factors (M18)
Adaptation of the theoretical pilot model for specific targeted populations (M32)
Conceptual framework for economic, social, legal, psychological, and nutritional determinants of behavioural change (M20)
Adaptation of the theoretical model to specific consumer’s profiles and targeted population (M34)
Food systems are currently threatening environmental sustainability and human health. While producers must work towards a more sustainable food system, environmentally sustainable and healthy diets should also be identified and improved worldwide. The adoption of a dietary change toward more sustainable eating behaviors would save an estimated 11 million lives annually (Willett et al. 2019). Despite being aware of the benefits of healthier and more sustainable diets, people find it hard to stick with such behavioral diet changes or on the contrary stick to them strictly with a negative impact on mental and physical health.
To broaden the current evidence of psychological factors affecting the transition from the intention of eating more sustainable and healthier food to implementing it, this research will be conducted in diverse populations and will be aimed at: 1) investigating the mediating and moderating role of clinical psychological barriers and facilitators to sustainable food choices; 2) clarifying specific psychological mechanisms and moderators of relationships between environmentally sustainable diets and eating disorders (ED) risk; 3) developing psychological intervention protocols to promote healthy and sustainable dietary behavior changes for target populations.
The operational plan consists of two main phases (evaluation phase and implementation phase) both conducted in different populations (general population, population at risk and/or with obesity, population at risk and/or with eating disorders).
1. During the evaluation phase, psychometric questionnaires will be administered to collect data on those clinical psychological factors scarcely investigated so far in relation to sustainable eating (psychological distress particularly eco-concern/anxiety, eating disorders risk, dysfunctional psychological well-being and cognitive processes, mindfulness eating, distress tolerance, personal values). These clinical psychological factors will be tested as additional psychological antecedents and mediational factors to better predict (compared to those well-established psychological factors already included in the most used psychological theoretical model on eating choices, the Theory of Planned Behavior, Ajzen, 1991), the complex pathways to engage people in sustainable and healthy eating changes. The data obtained during the evaluation phase in the target populations will serve as the basis for the implementation phase.
2. During the implementation phase, innovative intervention protocols (including traditional and digital strategies) will be designed and tailored for the diverse population targets and respectively tested in pilot studies.
In the fourth episode of *Food and Policies*, Maria Elide Vanutelli interviews Lucia Tecuta about her research on sustainable food choices and the psychological factors influencing them.
