COLL-S 105 Food for Thought: The Cognitive Science of Eating (Todd) (N&M)(3 cr.)

People spend a lot of time thinking about food – by some estimates, we make upwards of 200 food-related decisions per day. But how do we think about food? What are the ways we make these decisions? These are the types of questions that cognitive scientists and psychologists ask about peoples’ thinking, and in this course, we will apply the ideas and methods of cognitive science to the domain of food decisions. We will look at how people learn about different foods and come to have particular preferences; how we remember what we’ve eaten and how that influences what we will eat in the future; how social influences affect our food choices; what factors make us eat more or less; and how we can influence our own decision making about food in healthy directions.