Conceptual Framework for Nutritional Psychology as a New Field of Research

Conceptual Framework for Nutritional Psychology

Recent research underscores a strong two-way relationship between nutrition and psychological functioning. However, the structured and systematic exploration of this connection is still in its early stages, and nutritional psychology has yet to be officially recognized as a formal subfield of psychology. This paper by Stroebele-Benschop et al. (2025) outlines the foundational framework of nutritional psychology by identifying six core areas that conceptualize the link between diet and mental health. These domains are the diet-conative/affective (motivation and emotions), diet-cognitive (thinking and memory), diet-sensory/perception (how food affects the senses), diet-interoceptive (internal bodily awareness), diet-psychosocial (social influences on eating), and diet-environmental (contextual and external factors). Defining these areas helps establish a new interdisciplinary language, methodology, and theoretical structure for studying how diet impacts mental well-being. [NPID: Nutritional psychology, conceptual framework, nutrition, psychology]

Year: 2025

Reference: Stroebele-Benschop, N., Hedrih, V., Behairy, S., Pervaiz, N., & Morphew-Lu, E. (2025). Conceptual Framework for Nutritional Psychology as a New Field of Research. Behavioral Sciences, 15(8), 1007. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15081007

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