[PHNUTR-L] Not all eating habits are made alike. Some routines may even be beneficial, new study says

[Kathrynne Holden, MS, RD]

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Public release date: 30-Jan-2006
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/uocp-nae013006.php

Contact: Suzanne Wu
swu at press.uchicago.edu
773-834-0386
University of Chicago Press Journals

Not all eating habits are made alike. Some routines may even be 
beneficial, new study says

A new study on eating habits, forthcoming in the March 2006 issue of the 
Journal of Consumer Research, reveals that not all eating habits are 
made alike. Adwait Khare (University of Houston) and J. Jeffrey Inman 
(University of Pittsburgh) identify two ways of characterizing eating 
habits, which they termed "carryover habit" and "baseline habit." Their 
findings have important implications for nutritional guidelines and meal 
planning.

Carryover habit describes meal decisions affected by previous meals. The 
authors found that what we eat at a meal – say, breakfast – is more 
influenced by what we ate at the same meal the previous day than by the 
other prior meals. Breakfast has the strongest "carryover effect," 
possibly because we have less time to decide what to eat for breakfast 
and the most consistent environment for this meal.

Since we tend to eat more "good" nutrients, like calcium, at breakfast 
and more "bad" nutrients, like saturated fat, at dinner, this carryover 
might actually be beneficial. However, when the authors examined how 
much of each nutrient tended to be consumed at each meal, they found 
that people with a "baseline habit" consistently varied how much of each 
nutrient they ate according to what meal it was.

"Daily meals are associated with different food values," write the authors.

The authors suggest that instead of providing daily nutritional goals, 
we might want to embrace multi-day nutritional goals, taking into 
account how one day's meals affect the next day's meals. Also, knowing 
that we tend to approach dinner with a different set of habits, can help 
us look at nutritional goals with more clarity.
###
Adwait Khare and J. Jeffrey Inman. "Habitual Behavior in American Eating 
Patterns: The Role of Meal Occasions." Journal of Consumer Research. 
March 2006.
-- 
Kathrynne Holden, MS, RD < fivestar at nutritionucanlivewith.com >
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