Eating Influences on Neurosocial Learning

Hippocrates was the first to suggest the healing power of food. Food is now considered a tool that can modify temperament and mood, but how does this affect learning?

We may not control every component of what we eat, but we can control what we take out of it. Literally, what we eat influences our mood and how we go about learning at a psychological and physiological level. There are necessary nutrients that enable us to process information better, remain attentive, foster creativity, and even have better memory. If your body is not receiving the nutrients necessary to take on enhancing processes of your brain, things such as creativity, attention, and memory can be affected.

Content, learning, food intake

Have you ever eaten junk food for a couple of days and felt tired and unwilling to do anything? This is the effect that junk food can have, lacking the energizing nutrients that enable you to carry on your everyday practices. So what are you consuming and how are you using what you are consuming to foster learning? In other non food-logic terms, what are you eating that is affecting your learning?

To take the figurative approach, think about what you consume content-wise. This may be the content that you are taking in; the visual, auditory, and the textile information that fuels our minds everyday. From what you are consuming and contributing in conversation, to what you are listening to, and the everyday habits that you go about completing, can come a lot of haltering of learning as well as opportunities for learning. Most of the time, when we engage in a well thought conversation, we are able to communicate something because we have intrinsically had that conversation with ourselves. There is beauty in sharing this type of conversation, but alas, the best conversations comes from realizing something you hadn't connected before; those beautiful eureka moments that leave us feeling a rush of excitement.

My goal in this conversation is to incentivize you to have a beautiful eureka moment. I hope to be successful in my endeavor.

Controlling what we eat

One might say that we can’t really control what we eat, as the food processing system is becoming more complex than it ever has been before. You can’t control what you eat to every molecular and microscopic level, but you can control what you take out of it; that be the nutrients, the learning, or energy from it.

What you are seeing, hearing, and experiencing at any moment is changing not only your mood, but how your nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are working. So if eating has such an impact on our mind and body, why aren't we being more attentive of our consumptions?

Research shows that healthy food increases emotional well-being, physical health, and even cognitive ability. Pertaining to learning, it has been supported that schools that contract healthier vendors have students performing better on state tests, also being 3.4 times more able to maintain focus and retain information. Additionally, a study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that consumption of highly processed food increases the likeliness of hyperactivity in children. Processed foods also have effects of poor concentration and fatigue. These studies link healthy eating habits to cognitive function, but we will further discuss other effects of eating habits.

Hunger: The drive of society

We have recognized hunger as the key driver for eating. However, what we most often choose to eat is not determined entirely by physiological or nutritional needs. Some of the other factors that influence food choice include biological determinants. These include appetite and taste, which are enhanced and developed as life progresses. More psychological determinants might include mood, stress, guilt. Notably, there are other economic, social, and attitudes affecting our food intake.

Nutritionists continue to gain an understanding of eating intakes and patterns. For instance, research by Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology , claims that your personality type dictates your eating patterns. This study was funded upon using the big five personality types including; openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion. It was found that high openness to experience were associated with healthier higher fruit, vegetable and salad consumption. Meanwhile, conscientiousness mainly promoted fruit consumption by promoting restrained eating. Lastly, Neuroticism and Extraversion promoted consumption of sweet and savory foods by promoting emotional and external eating. So, could it all come down to your personality?

Personalities have been an area of interest in may research studies, some demonstrating that in fact, your personality can be changed. Personalities can evolve, aligning with social norms and personal preferences. One of the ironies that comes to mind , is our current socially accepted term "hunger". Hunger as the drive to pursue our passions; to be hungry for success. Media continues to push this thinking forward as a driver of change, while we globally have the highest obesity rates in history. Is it possible that the message is not coming across, or that we need to refocus on providing resources instead of mere motivation?

Food in social contexts

Our brain learns about our personal food preferences from social contexts. Studies have shown that we eat differently when we are surrounded by people compared with when we eat alone. We might engage in norm matching, which involves synchronization of eating actions.

It is from eating, then, that we are learning how to adapt to a society we so strongly want to be a part of. If we eat with someone who is eating a large amount of food, then we are likely to model what they eat . This means that as humans, we tend to model what other people do, and this goes hand in hand with media consumption.

You've probably heard before that we are socio-behavioral animals. To confirm this, let's note that eating behaviors evolve during the first years of life. Children learn what, when, and how much to eat through direct observations and experiences.

Food and knowledge scarcity

Across human history, undernutrition and food scarcity have been major threats to wellbeing. Some cultures encourage parental feeding practices including providing large portions of food, although many regions have shifted the balance from scarcity to excess of food. This supports the idea that more is not always better. As with the surge of media, knowledge is more widely distributed, but has it really made us more knowledgable, more educated? Overconsumption of both food and knowledge has become a threat to social, emotional, and overall wellbeing.

To move on, let's look at a diagram illustrating normative eating habits.

Figure 1. Norms of appropriate eating from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215461500131X.

To conclude, food preference and aversions strongly affect what we decide to eat. Such preferences are influenced by experience and by classical and instrumental conditioning. From our chemical senses, we may also have the ability to make strong associations. Preferences are formed as early before birth, by flavors in the amniotic fluid of the mother's food intake.

Going back to the nature vs nurture post, we are a combination of both our environmental and genetic factors. We are learning creatures conditioned by our own lived experiences, but also those lived by others.

---

Although this post focused more on the social contexts leading to certain eating habits, I prompt you to connect this to how eating influences learning not only at the socio-cognitive level, but also at the memory- association level, as well as other biochemical homeostatic balances.

Further research is needed in these areas and continue to be explored.

Thanks for reading!

Sources

Birch, L., Savage, J. S., & Ventura, A. (2007). Influences on the development of children's eating behaviours: From infancy to adolescence. Canadian journal of dietetic practice and research : a publication of Dietitians of Canada. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2678872/

The factors that influence our food choices. Eufic. (n.d.). https://www.eufic.org/en/healthy-living/article/the-determinants-of-food-choice

Food choice. Food Choice - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (n.d.). https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/food-choice

Higgs, S., & Thomas, J. (2015, October 31). Social influences on eating. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215461500131X

Oliverian School. OLIVERIAN SCHOOL. (n.d.). https://www.oliverianschool.org/how-diet-and-food-affects-learning/

Savage, J. S., Fisher, J. O., & Birch, L. L. (2007). Parental influence on eating behavior: Conception to adolescence. The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2531152/

Your personality is making you fat - media coverage - Appetite - Journal - Elsevier. Journal. (n.d.). https://www.journals.elsevier.com/appetite/media-coverage/your-personality-is-making-you-fat