Food for thought: A French population’s subjective evaluations of emotional and hedonic valences, subjective nutritional value, and familiarity of 201 “food words”

Our relationship to food is underpinned by objective dimensions (nutritional value, frequency, and so on) and subjective (emotional and hedonic valences, subjective nutritional value, and familiarity). In order to build a French database, we collected subjective evaluations from 189 students on 201 “food words.” Our results show inconsistent links between objective frequency and familiarity, as well as between objective and subjective nutritional values. The emotional valence is positively correlated with hedonic valence and familiarity, and negatively correlated with subjective nutritional value. The subjective nutritional value is negatively correlated with familiarity and hedonic valence in women, and positively in men. Principal component analysis (PCA) and ascending hierarchical classification (AHC) were used to organize the food words into eight classes of homogeneous words. This characterization should lead to a better control of “food words” in studies focusing on normal or pathological eating behavior.