Healthy at home, unhealthy outside: Food groups associated with family and friends and the potential impact on attitude and consumption

Two studies were conducted to investigate adolescents' tendency to associate healthy food with family and junk food with friends, at both an explicit and implicit level. Study 2 also explored whether family and peer influences on food attitudes and consumption can be exerted through these mere associations, testing the moderating effect of social identity. Overall, results confirmed that our participants tended to associate healthy food with family and junk food with friends, both deliberatively (at the explicit level) and automatically (at the implicit level). In addition, these mere associations predicted food consumption frequency, either directly (fruit-family) or indirectly through attitude (snacks-friends), for participants highly identified with the corresponding reference group. The present research contributes to a deeper understanding of the social meaning of food by focusing on the associations of different food types with different social contexts and provides suggestions for improving health education and prevention programs.