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Week 31/ 2006: Financial hardship can undermine mental health

Eating is not easy today: if you eat unhealthily, you will notice the signs in your body. If you are strict about your diet, you may experience resentment from the people around you. Either you are at risk from the medical point of view or you are viewed as a control freak.

Marieke Saher, MA, has discussed everyday beliefs about food and health in her doctoral dissertation for the Department of Psychology. She has chosen a subject about which everyone seems to have an opinion. “I found that holding beliefs about food and health which may even be close to superstitious need not mean that people would in reality behave against their better judgment,” says Saher.

Her work is based on four aspects of everyday thinking: “you are what you eat” thinking, attitudes towards gene-manipulated and organic food, and belief in alternative medicine.

It is commonplace according to Saher that people draw conclusions about others based solely on their dietary choices. Those who eat healthily are considered to be more disciplined in general but are also presumed to be less likable. “Eating liberally is part of a relaxed social life. If, for example, a person comes to a barbecue and is fastidious about what they eat, others automatically think that this person does not know how to enjoy life at all.”

A matter more closely linked with beliefs is that of gene-manipulated and organic food. Among Saher’s respondents those who were more prone to superstitious thinking were also more positive about organic and more negative about gene-manipulated food than the average. “Here, too, the question is really about image and the link to superstitious thinking rather than the real health effects of these foods.”

The strongest links prevailed between superstitious thinking, acceptance of alternative medicine and paranormal phenomena. This is when the boundaries between physics, biology and psychology easily become blurred and rational thinking and utter nonsense shake hands. This divergence is not easily shaken, but maybe it is not even necessary. “Although an idea might be complete nonsense, it may serve a person psychologically by giving hope or consolation,” says the researcher.

Text: Kai Maksimainen
Picture: Simo Salmela
www.helsinki.fi/digitalcommunications

Translation: Valtasana Oy