Poster #26 - Early Confusion About Meat and Other Animal-Based Foods

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Despite being a priority for parents and educators, little is known about children’s food knowledge. Existing research has examined children’s understanding of eating and digestion as an aspect of a naïve theory of biology (e.g., Inagaki & Hatano, 1996; Wellman & Johnson, 1982). With respect to food, research has focused on children’s food preferences (e.g., Birch, Fisher, & Grimm-Thomas, 1999; Paroche, Caton, Vereijken, Weenen, & Houston-Price, 2017; Rozin, 1990), with a second well-developed branch of research addressing what children know about the nutritional value of various foods (e.g., Nguyen, 2007; Wiseman & Harris, 2015; for a review of both topics, see Schultz & Danford, 2016). Significantly less research has investigated what children believe to be sources of the foods they regularly eat.

In the current study, we set out to assess basic knowledge of food in a group of children between the ages of 4 and 7 years (n = 176) from both high- and low-income families. We examined children’s knowledge of the plant and animal origins of foods, as well as their judgments of what can be eaten using two dichotomous sorting tasks. In the Edibility Sorting Task, children classified pictures (e.g., cat, dirt, pig, tomato) as either OK or not OK to eat. In the Food Origin Sorting Task, children categorized foods (e.g., apple, French Fries, hamburger, milk) as coming from plants or animals.

Overall, the results revealed widespread errors in children’s basic understanding of food, suggesting that children may know less about food than what had previously been recognized. Foods derived from animals were associated with the highest error rates. In the Food Origin Sorting Task, children regularly classified meats (e.g., hotdog) and non-meat animal foods (e.g., milk) as coming from plants. Figure 1 shows error rates in this task as a function of food type (plant-based, meat, non-meat animal food) and age (4-5 years, 6-7 years). Similarly, in the Edibility Sorting Task, children were not able to reliably identify which animals are culturally appropriate to eat (see Figure 2). Instead, they showed a strong bias to sort animals, irrespective of their cultural status as a food source, as “not OK to eat.” Not even six- and seven-year-olds, the older age group we tested, fully understood the concept of animals as food. The chicken, cow and pig were incorrectly classified as “not OK to eat” by more than half of older children.

We believe that children’s misunderstandings of animal-based foods arise, in part, because of deliberate attempts by parents to prevent children from knowing where meat comes from. We also interpret the results in the context of a growing body of research about the psychology of meat (Loughnan, Bastian, & Haslam, 2014) that includes, for example, strategies that facilitate the dissociation of meat from its animal origins (Kunst & Hohle, 2016). More broadly, the results of the present research have implications for educational programs, as well as the childhood obesity epidemic.

Authors

• Erin R. Hahn, Furman University
  Presenting Author

• Meghan E Gillogly, Furman University
  Non-Presenting Author