EDMONTON, Alberta—While most people understand the basic rules of healthy eating and proper nutrition, lack of willpower is ultimately the culprit that leads them down the road to obesity, according to a new study published in the journal Appetite.
Researchers at the University of Alberta concluded an individual’s eating habits are a result of the battle between two conflicting sets of norms—descriptive and injunctive. Injunctive norms are beliefs of what are right or wrong or good or bad in terms of behaviors. These values arrive externally from groups such as family, peers or government or educational materials. Whether a person adheres to those values determines whether the person is rewarded or punished within that group. Descriptive norms are those that define what most people do in terms of actions or behaviors.
Lead researcher Robert Fisher said while we know that eating cheeseburgers might be bad for us, the signs in our environment give us the green light to consume.
“Not only is fast-food advertising very prevalent, but you see fast-food signs, restaurants and wrappers everywhere," he said. "I think as a result, our baseline notion of what is normal is also changing. It's a bigger part of our lives than it ever has been before and there's no going back."
For the study, the researchers defined the lay beliefs of Americans with regard to rules about eating. Responses such as not snacking, always eating breakfast and not wasting food were common responses. Through a series of studies, Fisher synthesized his findings into scales wherein these rules were weighed against factors such as eating behaviors, body satisfaction and social desirability.
"The goal was to demonstrate that these scales are a comprehensive inventory of North Americans' most important beliefs about eating," said Fisher.
People with higher body mass indexes had stronger beliefs associated with the rules than people with lower BMIs. They also found people with higher BMIs actually had stronger beliefs in the normative rules related to eating. The missing element, he said, was not following their individual belief structures.
"What we found is that if people undertake these behaviors, which are related to the norms, they tend to have a lower BMI," he said. "Having the beliefs alone is just not sufficient."
He concluded that issues such as impulsive eating can be curbed and changed, but what needs to be worked on is the resolve to follow the rules people already know and not give up.
"It's not a knowledge problem. People know what they need to do. It's just doing it or being motivated enough to do it, said Fisher. "It's really about changing behaviors.
