Almost 40% of global mortality is attributable to an unhealthy diet, and adolescents and young adults are particularly affected by growing obesity rates. How do (young) people conceptualize and judge the healthiness of foods and how are the judgments embedded in people's mental representations of the food ecology? We asked respondents to rate a large range of common food products on a diverse set of characteristics and then applied the psychometric paradigm to identify the dimensions structuring people's mental representations of the foods. Respondents were also asked to rate each food in terms of its healthiness, and we used the foods' scores on the extracted dimensions to predict the healthiness judgments. We compared three groups of respondents: adolescents, lay adults, and nutrition experts. Naturalness levels (e.g., processing, artificial additives) and cholesterol and protein content emerged as the two central dimensions structuring respondents' mental representations of the foods. Relative to the other two groups, the adolescents' representations were less differentiated. Judged food healthiness was determined by multiple factors, but naturalness was the strongest predictor across all groups. Overall, the adolescents' responses showed considerable heterogeneity, suggesting a lack of solid food knowledge and the need for tailored nutrition education on specific food products and content characteristics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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青少年、非专业人士和专家对食品的看法：一种心理测量方法。

全球近 40% 的死亡率可归因于不健康的饮食，青少年和年轻人尤其受到肥胖率上升的影响。（年轻人）如何概念化和判断食物的健康性，以及这些判断是如何嵌入到人们对食物生态的心理表征中的？我们要求受访者根据不同的特征对大量常见食品进行评分，然后应用心理测量范式来确定构建人们对食物的心理表征的维度。受访者还被要求根据健康程度对每种食物进行评分，我们使用食物在提取维度上的得分来预测健康判断。我们比较了三组受访者：青少年、非专业人士和营养专家。自然度水平（例如，加工、人工添加剂）以及胆固醇和蛋白质含量成为构建受访者对食物的心理表征的两个中心维度。相对于其他两组，青少年的表现差异较小。判断的食物健康度由多种因素决定，但天然性是所有组中最强的预测因素。总体而言，青少年的反应表现出相当大的异质性，表明缺乏固体食物知识，需要针对特定​​食品和内容特征进行量身定制的营养教育。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。青少年的表现差异较小。判断的食物健康度由多种因素决定，但天然性是所有组中最强的预测因素。总体而言，青少年的反应表现出相当大的异质性，表明缺乏固体食物知识，需要针对特定​​食品和内容特征进行量身定制的营养教育。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。青少年的表现差异较小。判断的食物健康度由多种因素决定，但天然性是所有组中最强的预测因素。总体而言，青少年的反应表现出相当大的异质性，表明缺乏固体食物知识，需要针对特定​​食品和内容特征进行量身定制的营养教育。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。表明缺乏固体食品知识，需要针对特定​​食品和内容特征进行量身定制的营养教育。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。表明缺乏固体食品知识，需要针对特定​​食品和内容特征进行量身定制的营养教育。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。