Establishment And Application In Dieting Psychology Of Chinese Food Image Library

Overweight and obesity have become a worldwide health problem.Overweight can increase the risk of heart disease,high blood pressure,diabetes,certain cancers and other diseases.One of the important causes of the continued increase in the obesity rate is the ' obesogenic' environment in which people are living.This refers to that the high-energy-density foods with low physical demands are readily available in this environment.One of the typical features of this environment is that people are exposed to food clues more frequently in daily life,people are surrounded by a variety of visual food cues,not just in shopping malls,supermarkets,or restaurants.Visual food cues are also often announced on billboard,television programs,and advertisements,which appear in various forms such as text,images,and videos.In recent years,as the proportion of obese and overweight groups in the world's population has gradually increased,Chinese researchers have begun to pay attention to the exploration of obesity incentives and the study of ways to find out the current status of relief.Food images as effective substitutes for real foods are food visual clues commonly used in dietary behavior,obesity,and food research,and are widely used in behavioral research and brain research.Some foreign laboratories have already established the food picture database,but there are certain differences in the methods,ideas,and purposes of building the database.In addition,there are some unavoidable problems in applying them to Chinese indigenous studies.At present,domestic food and obesity related studies mostly use non-standardized food pictures,which detailed picture information and food composition information descriptions.Therefore,it is difficult to carry out repeated studies or cross-laboratory comparative studies.The purpose of Study 1 is to establish a standardized Chinese food image database and provide reference data(including physical properties of pictures,nutritional composition of foods,and image assessment data)for subsequent studies,and to integrate the establishment methods of existing picture libraries.High-quality food picture materials can improv the current fact that dietary behavior research experimental materials selection is not standard and the results of the study can not be compared or repeated.At present,the Chinese Food Image Library contains a total of 508 food images involving common food types and have high recognizability and familiarity.In the future,according to different research purposes and needs,the pictures can be screened and classified based on the data provided in the picture library,not limited to the existing classifications in the current picture library.Study 2 focused on the similarities and differences in food rewards and emotional dimensions of different types of food images.A total of 989 participants in different education stages completed assessment of food images.As a result,it was found that there was a significant correlation between the valence and the arousal.Regardless of whether it was classified according to food taste or food energy content,similar results were found in the degree of liking and wanting.High-calorie food pictures in food rewards and pleasure,arousal scores are higher than low-calorie food images,while sweet foods also score higher than other flavored foods.Compared to male,female individuals are more likely to be affected by food cues.Because of the eating habits,the adolescent showed a preference for spicy food images.Study 3 focuses on the factors that influence the individual's dietary decision-making and whether individual's dietary behavioral decisions can play a role in predicting changes in BMI.Individuals with different BMIs were analyzed for similarities and differences in decision-making based on the degree of food palability and health,and whether different decision-making habits were able to predict changes in individuals' BMI after 18 months.The results showed that when eating food decisions were evaluated,the healthy-weight subjects were more likely to choose to eat than those who were obese and overweight.When individuals make diet decisions,they prioritize the degree of palability rather than health,that is,pay more attention to the hedonic ingredients of food.In the prediction of dietary decisions on future BMI changes,the higher the healthy individual's decision-making on the food,especially for high-calorie food,the higher the probability of an increase in the future BMI.In summary,the China Food Image Library provides standardized food visual materials for research on food cues,dietary behavior and obesity and other related fields.Currently,it contains 508 food images involving different food types and classification methods and provides detailed image physical characteristics and food ingredient content data.In the study of the food picture database,it was found that high calorie foods and sweet foods were rated higher in terms of food rewards and emotional features.Due to the general eating habits of the participants,spicy foods were also able to induce a higher score in food rewards,pleasure and arousal.In terms of dietary behavioral decisionmaking,healthy-weight subjects were more likely to choose to eat than obese and over-weight participants.All participants were more likely to make diet decisions based on the level of taste rather than on the level of health.In addition,to a certain extent,the individual's dietary decision-making can predict the change of BMI.