Age and body make a difference in optimistic health beliefs and nutrition behaviors

Nutrition behaviors are governed by health beliefs such as risk perceptions , outcome expectancies, and optimistic self-beliefs. This study deals with the role that objective criteria such as age and body weight might play in forming subjective beliefs. The question is whether they can deter people f rom forming an overly optimistic judgment of their health risk. Six kinds o f verbal judgments were assessed, namely self-reported health, vulnerabilit y toward cardiovascular diseases, nutrition outcome expectancies, nutrition self-efficacy, intentions to change one's diet, and reported nutrition beh aviors. Tn a sample of 1,583 men and women between 14 and 87 years of age, these judgments were statistically related to age and body weight. It was f ound that people do take their objective risk status into account, but only to a certain degree. The self-serving bias continues to exist throughout a ll age groups and weight levels. Moreover, it was found that individuals re port better intentions to adhere to healthy foods and better nutrition beha viors as they grow older and gain weight.