TY - JOUR TI - Food attitudes across adolescence DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T38K7C6B PY - 2016 AB - This study investigated the relations between age and individuals’ food attitudes; gender, weight status, and body satisfaction were explored as moderators. It was hypothesized that there would be an overall negative correlation between age and food attitudes with older participants having less healthy attitudes about food; this relation was expected to be stronger for girls than boys. Adolescents (N = 1107, Mage = 15.58 years) from a public high school completed self-report questionnaires assessing their age, gender, weight status, body satisfaction, and food attitudes. The results showed that older adolescents experienced greater pleasure from food, while adolescents’ weight status predicted decreased pleasure from food and increased weight concerns. Further, the study’s findings revealed that there was a smaller difference in weight concerns for younger versus older boys regardless of weight status, whereas there was a significantly greater difference in weight status for younger versus older girls, regardless of weight status. These results show that an adolescent’s weight concerns are dependent not only on their weight status and age but also their gender. It is hoped that these findings lead to the creation of interventions to address food attitudes that may contribute to ameliorating the current obesity epidemic among adolescents. KW - Psychology KW - Food habits KW - Nutrition--Psychological aspects LA - eng ER -