We face each day with mostly automatic choices on when to eat, what to eat and how we manage our food intake. These decisions, often beyond our conscious awareness, are quietly produced by biological, psycho-social and economic factors. These external forces can lead to making us eventually susceptible to overeating, resulting to obesity.
Biological factors play a big role on our appetites. We are born with a desire for certain types of food. An obvious example is a young person with a "sweet tooth," in which the biological choice for candy is dominant. This kind of food choice can change during adulthood or it can be enhanced. These changes depend on how we are enticed or discouraged by new products developed to become more satisfying to our taste buds as we grow older. The effects can lead to either a healthy habit or an eating disorder.
Since the majority of eating preferences are learned behaviors, psycho-social factors definitely play major influences. The people within our social environment are great contributors on our food choices. We learn from parents and siblings during toddler stage, from the circle of friends during school age and teenage years and, of course, during adulthood. A person's psychological health depends on the changes that take place between childhood and adulthood. People tend to associate their unhealthy food intake habits when they're overwhelmed with strong emotions like anger, sadness, joy or exhaustion.
A person's economic situation is probably one of the factors that can greatly affect his eating preferences. Low-income groups tend to settle for low-cost, energy-rich products that have lesser nutritional values. Sooner or later, such habit will result in malnutrition and serious health-related diseases. On the other hand, obesity and psycho-social-related eating disorders are oftentimes linked to those with higher economic status.
Hope steps in, now that we've been made aware of these influential forces affecting our food consumption habits. It's about time to make some conscious interventions.
