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Nutrition psychology is an interdisciplinary scientific domain within the specialization of health psychology, dealing with the implication of feeding behavior on human health and well-being. A major goal of nutrition psychology is to study consumer behaviors and how decisions on food choice may have a significant impact on health outcomes, including risks for obesity, heart disease and some cancers. These behaviors are affected by psychological aspects, which impact people’s perception of nutrition and health. Nutrition psychology is interrelated with many topics, such as nutrition, psychology, medicine, agriculture, and marketing.

Overview

Nutrition is defined as "the act or process of nourishing or being nourished; specifically:  the sum of the processes by which an animal or plant takes in and utilizes food substances" and psychology is defined as "the study of mind and behavior in relation to a particular field of knowledge or activity," in this case the particular field is nutrition. Therefore, nutrition psychology is the study of mind and behavior in relation to the process of taking in and utilizing food.

Origins and development

Nutrition psychology is a field that is still in its early stages of development. With obesity a continually growing problem in the United States and abroad, nutrition psychology is gaining importance and popularity in society today. As it has grown, nutrition psychology has directly and indirectly influenced research on dieting, food labels, the way food is marketed, food technology, obesity, and the attitude of the public towards food, among other topics.

Objectives

Today, more people than ever are considered "overweight" or "obese" and nutrition psychology aims to explain what psychological trends may be behind this phenomenon. Nutrition psychology not only looks at the internal psychological effects of why people do what they do, but also how they are shaped and influenced by outside stimuli. Marketing campaigns for food and beverages are increasing prevalent today and are larger in scope than ever before, given the resources that large corporations are able to use in the forms of social media and viral marketing.

Applications

Nutrition psychology has many applications not only related to how and what people eat on a day-to-day basis, but also the ways in which and why they diet and exercise. Fad diets are extremely popular in today's society and they usually play heavily on potential customers' ideals about what they should weigh or look like.

The 2004 documentary film, Super Size Me, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock takes a look at the ways in which the fast food industry in America is influencing how people and especially young children, view nutrition.

See also

• Health psychology
• Nutrition
• Fad diet
• Obesity

External links

• http://www.nutritional-psychology.org/nutritional-psychology/

So far, I have:

• Tweaked the opening paragraph so that it flows a bit better, but it could still use some work and may change once I do more research
• Included multiple headings in an effort to organize/expand the page and help guide my research
• By creating headings, made a table of contents which this page did not previously have
• Introduced a Psychology Information box into the article
• Wrote at least one sentence per section, whether it is cited or not, to gain some traction and provide a direction to move in
• Added new links to "See also" that were not there previously
• Created and added to the "External links" section

I still need to:

• Develop and add content!
  • Thorough, well thought out descriptions for each heading
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  • Link other articles to this one