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Title:
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Cross-cultural perceptions of natural food
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Author:
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Serin, Jordan
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Abstract:
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This thesis seeks to investigate the influence of evolved human cognitive mechanisms on contemporary perceptions and categorizations of food with a particular focus on the meaning of “natural”. The first research question of this thesis asks whether people prefer natural foods in two different cultural contexts, the United States and Mexico. The second research question of this thesis builds upon prior evolutionary studies by asking whether perceptions of natural food offer evidence to support the position that people in all cultures think about living things in the same special ways. The study found that study participants in both cultures prefer natural over commercial forms of food, and that preferences and perceptions differ between males and females. Natural food preferences and perceptions differ for plant- and animal-based foods. Different genetically modified variants also received significantly different naturalness ratings depending on whether the modification involved the mixing of taxonomically related or distant genes. These results contradict Rozin’s (2005) findings and suggest that biological ‘content’ appears to have as much (or more) of an influence as ‘process’ on people’s preferences and perceptions of natural food. |
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Description:
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Thesis (M.A., Anthropology) -- California State University, Sacramento, 2011. |
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URI:
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http://hdl.handle.net/10211.9/1363
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Date:
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2011-08-26 |
