EMOTIONAL PERCEPTION OF FOOD BY NUTRITION AND GASTRONOMY STUDENTS (Atena Editora)

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the emotional perception of visual stimuli of food content as well as susceptibility to eating disorders in students of Gastronomy, Nutrition, and other courses. The study had the participation of 60 students, twenty individuals of each group. To assess the emotional perception were presented 70 visuals stimuli of different contexts selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), including 20 stimuli of food content. The appreciation of the stimuli was performed through the Self-Assessment Manikin scale, which evaluated the affective dimension valence, arousal and dominance. To evaluate eating behavior, it was used the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26) and The Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-R21) and for evaluating the presence or absence of alexithymia it was used the Toronto Alexithymia Scale was (SAT-26). For the Gastronomy students group the figures of food contents were considered so pleasant and raised as arousal as the high and low- arousal pleasant stimuli. For the other groups the low-arousal pleasant figures were considered more pleasant than the figures of food content and raised less arousal than high arousal pleasant pictures. There was no difference in the affective dimension of dominance. In terms of susceptibility to eating disorders development, the three student’s groups behaved similarly, showing no degree of eating behavior considered suggestive of disorder. Moreover, it was evident the high incidence of alexithymia in the three groups. In summary, we observed the difference in the emotional perception of food in Gastronomy students who showed a more intense and emotionally significant relationship with their work object compared to students of Nutrition, which also work with the same content.