The construction of a food-behavior inventory to measure beliefs about the behavioral effects of food

Abstract

It is not uncommon for people to believe that diseases and good health are associated with or caused by specific foods. For example, in rural India the citizenry have designated certain foods as or and believed that each type of food was responsible for specific diseases also designated as or (Pool, 1987). Thus a hot food, such as dried fish, could produce a hot disease, such as leprosy, while a cold food like bananas could produce a cough, a cold symptom. Abdussalam, Foster, and Kaferstein (1989) have reported that this hot-cold classification system is used by at least two billion people throughout the Orient, Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan, and Latin America for determining behavior related to growth, health, illness, and pregnancy. In Brazil, Trigo, Roncada, Stewien, and Pereira (1989) found that people believed that the simultaneous ingestion of milk and certain fruits, like mangoes, oranges, and pineapples, could cause harm to or even kill the consumer. Americans also make attributions about the effects of food on particular behaviors. People typically refer to the experience of a sugar high after eating highly sweetened foods. Popular writers, such as Feingold (1975) and Rapp (1979), have written about a link between food sensitivities and a variety of behavioral and physical symptoms. There is widespread belief among parents of hyperactive children in the efficacy of the Feingold diet (Conners, 1980), despite the lack of evidence that more than a minority of children demonstrate clinically significant behavioral effects from food dyes (Defined Diets and Childhood Hyperactivity, 1982; Weiss et al., 1980). Beliefs about food have important consequences for health practices. If certain attributions are made about particular foods, there is a potential for people to