“My Favorite Food”: What Does That Mean? by Joan Kent, PhD

Some years ago, I attended a seminar for fitness professionals. It was on eating behaviors. The team who put the seminar together presented the results of a questionnaire they had used with a variety of populations. Among other questions, they asked, “What’s your favorite food?”

 

The respondents’ answers were interesting, but not as interesting as the attending fitness pros’ interpretations of those answers.

 

For example, weightlifters, football players, and other male athletes answered “breakfast.” No one in the entire class objected to this, making me wonder if I was the only one thinking that “breakfast” isn’t a food.

 

What’s breakfast? Bacon and eggs? Waffles and syrup? Coffee and a donut? Coffee and a cigarette? How about last night’s pizza? Judging eating behaviors on that answer is misleading at best.

 

They asked ballet dancers, whose mental programming tells them they need to weigh 89 pounds, the same question. They said chocolate was their favorite food.

 

A woman I knew, a recent convert to healthful eating, interpreted the dancers’ answer to mean that the dancers ate chocolate all the time. She was shocked and judgmental. My take was they almost never let themselves eat it and therefore had strong longings for it, making it their favorite in that sense.

 

Whatever food the target group mentioned, in most cases the class concluded the respondents were eating that food frequently. While it might have been true sometimes, I disagreed with that interpretation generally.

 

FWIW, I turned the question on myself. My favorite food is ice cream.

 

Now, I haven’t eaten any ice cream in 20 years. Really. Yes, it probably sounds made up, but it’s true. And you should have seen how much ice cream I used to put away 20-plus years ago; it was scary.

 

So ice cream was my favorite food many years ago because I liked the taste of it so much. I ate it almost daily because of that – and because I was addicted to sugar. Today, I recall with fondness the delicious taste of it and strongly believe if I had a dish of good-quality ice cream in a flavor I enjoy – no cherry vanilla, no coffee, no neopolitan – that I’d still find it quite palatable. As a result, I’d classify ice cream as my favorite food even today.

 

But that does not mean I eat it frequently. Or ever.

 

Fact:  You can love a food and never eat it.

 

For those who believe “favorite” means the person eats it all the time, I’d submit that’s a misinterpretation. When those misinterpretations come from nutrition coaches or fitness instructors, they can lead to bad coaching.

 

If you’re looking for someone who ‘gets’ where you’re coming from with food, just visit LastResortNutrition.com and grab your free Favorite Food Consult. Discover how easy it is to make small shifts that result in huge changes in your health, your appetite, your weight and more.

 

Brought to you by Dr. Joan Kent, best-selling author of Stronger Than Sugar.