Browsing by Author "Wallace, Jamie Charles Terrence"

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Open Access
Beliefs about the Healthfulness of Common Foods
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2016-07) Wallace, Jamie Charles Terrence; Arbuthnott, Katherine; Oriet, Christopher; Carleton, R. Nicholas
The primary focus of this research was to evaluate beliefs about the healthfulness of common foods. There is widespread agreement that a whole foods, plants-based diet, such as that depicted by Canada’s Food Guide, promotes optimal health. However, many processed foods are marketed with nutrition messages that are purportedly designed to assist people in making healthier food choices, but may in fact be misleading. This study evaluated beliefs about the healthfulness of 30 common foods across three categories, whole, processed, and highly processed foods, and compared them to an objective measurement of nutritiousness. An array of food choice items, including values such as health, price, and convenience, as well as physical health and fitness questions, were included in the current study to explore relationships with ratings of healthfulness and frequency. Results indicate that participants underestimated the healthfulness of whole foods, were reasonably accurate when rating processed foods, and overrated the healthfulness of highly processed foods. Participants rated whole foods as being included in their diets more frequently than either processed or highly processed foods. Correlation analyses indicated relationships between ratings of healthfulness, frequency, food choice values and health and fitness items. Consumers must be able to understand the relative healthfulness of foods in the marketplace in order to choose a healthy diet. The current study suggests that consumer understanding of the healthfulness of common foods, especially whole and highly processed foods, is questionable. Additionally, food and nutrition information sources were not related to healthfulness ratings. These findings have implications for healthy eating policies because they suggest the need for other strategies beyond information interventions.
Open Access
Determinants of food choice: The role of nudging, affective forecasting, habitual behaviour, and values
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2025-01) Wallace, Jamie Charles Terrence; Arbuthnott, Katherine; Carleton, Nicholas; Pennycook, Gordon; Mahani, Akram; Forestell, Catherine A.
Modern eating habits have created a tremendous burden of disease in Canada and other western countries. There is a large research literature that has investigated interventions for improving dietary health in the population, including work that focuses on rational or conscious factors (e.g., the provision of health information) and heuristic factors (e.g., social norms and priming healthier food choices). More broadly, researchers have worked to identify determinants of food choice to better understand why people select particular foods, resulting in an array of known factors that in some way predict food choice. The current research was designed to examine and compare empirically supported predictors to inform future interventions and to test a possible priming intervention in an online meal selection context that presents both healthy and unhealthy meal options to participants. Participants were exposed to one of two primes, or a control condition, and then made either a whole or processed food meal selection. Participants also rated their affect towards the foods and completed questionnaires that measured food choice values and meanings, habitual behaviour, typical meal sources, and demographics. Results indicated that affect ratings and familiarity were the strongest predictors of food choice, although other meanings and values, such as health values and habitual behaviours were also important. Priming did not influence meal selection in the current study. The current results suggest that interventions focusing on developing positive feelings, familiarity, and habitual behaviour towards healthy whole foods are likely to be more successful than interventions focusing on rational factors; however, values and meanings were also statistically significant predictors of whole food meal selections and may also be useful for improving food choice.