If you think it’s difficult getting your head around all the complicated science that seems to underpin discussions of diet, don’t worry. There’s a whole branch of psychology specifically dedicated to how people think about food and how food makes us feel. It’s called nutritional psychology, and if nothing else, it shows that just telling people what they should eat is not as simple as it sounds.
Lots of people have a complicated relationship with food, and nutritional psychology tries to figure out why. It looks at the physiological and biological aspects of nutrition, along with individual and cultural attitudes. That makes it an interdisciplinary field spanning a wide range of topics.
One of the big challenges of trying to encourage people to eat better is changing how they think. Whether it’s deconstructing the idea that unhealthy food will always taste better than healthy food, trying to teach people how to control portion sizes, overcoming the influence of peer pressure on what we eat, or breaking free from the dangerous though patterns that can lead to eating disorders, it’s clear there’s a psychological component that has to be understood when tackling attitudes to dieting.
There’s also increasing evidence that what we eat doesn’t just affect our physical body, but our mental health (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31735529/). People with depression, anxiety and similar disorders may exacerbate their symptoms if they eat the wrong thing, but it’s also much harder to make good food decisions when your mood is already low. Understanding the link between mental health and food is vital if psychologists and psychiatrists want to achieve the best outcomes for their patients.
Studies into the connections between nutrition and psychology are relatively recent. There’s still a lot of evidence to collect. People are, however, increasingly realizing that humans are complicated. Health depends on a dizzying mix of factors, and acknowledging that it’s rarely as simple as one cause and one solution has been an important part of how healthcare has developed more generally. Increasing our understanding of the psychological aspects of nutrition is just one part of this.
Don’t worry too much if the neverending advice on how to eat right makes your head hurt. This isn’t an easy subject. Eating in a way that improves both your physical and mental health is something that a lot of people need help to understand.
