Changing Food Consumption Behaviors

Few products are as pervasive and essential to our everyday lives as food: food fuels and satisfies our body, but also excites, disgusts, arouses, stimulates, and tantalizes all of our senses. It is functional and utilitarian, yet also hedonistic. Food consumption is also often a social act and our environment strongly influences what we consume. Yet, despite its obvious importance to us and our well-being, it appears that as a society the consumption of food has led to a variety of difficult challenges that require some level of behavior change by consumers. Though several decades of research have sought to find answers to the many food consumption challenges that exist, it appears that excessive consumption of the “wrong” foods and its consequences (e.g., obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc.) have begun to override prior concerns about food consumption deficit. Levels of obesity seem to be rising globally and apparently “no national success stories have been reported in the past 33 years” (Ng et al., 2014, p. 766).