Have Your Cake and Hate It, Too: Ambivalent Food Attitudes Are Associated With Dietary Restraint

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The extent to which foods differ in their likelihood of eliciting ambivalent attitudes and the effect of dietary restraint on these attitudes was investigated. Positive and negative attitudes toward 5 categories of food were collected from 82 female undergraduates. Two measures of restrained eating, the Restraint Scale and the Drive for Thinness subscale of the EDI-2, were also collected. Ambivalence scores computed from the separate positive and negative evaluations were higher on average for desserts and candies, high-sugar foods, and high-carbohydrate foods than for fruits and vegetables and meats. In addition, food attitudes were more ambivalent on average for restrained eaters, with ambivalence increasing as a function of restraint for high-fat and high-carbohydrate foods in particular. By contrast, dietary restraint was associated with less ambivalence toward fruits and vegetables. Restrained eating also seemed to affect the negative attitude component more than the positive component. These latter effects suggest the importance of attitudes toward food in understanding restrained eating and its effect on behavior.