Social Learning Theory, Attitudes and Theory of Planned Behaviour: Influencing Healthy Eating Behaviour to Reduce Obesity Risk in the UK

This report discusses how social learning theory, attitudes and theory of planned behaviour can influence healthy eating behaviour to reduce obesity risk in the UK. It also provides insights into the rate of obesity in different age groups in the UK and recommendations to reduce it.

Study report

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Theoretical perspectives about Social learning theory, attitudes and theory of planned
behaviour.....................................................................................................................................3
Data of rate of obesity in UK......................................................................................................6
Recommendation.........................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Obesity refers to a complex disease that involves a excessive amount of body fat. This refers to a
medical problem that increases risk of disease along with health issues like diabetes, heart
disease, certain cancer and high blood pressure. There are different social determinant that can
influence the behaviour of individual to influence healthy eating behaviour. In this report, there
is discussion about social learning theory, attitudes and theory of planned behaviour that can
influence social and biological determinant of unhealthy eating behaviour. There is also
understanding about the different factor which can help to influence behaviour of healthy eating
for better and improve health and leads to avoid the risk of obesity in individual (Kinlen, (2018)).
MAIN BODY
Theoretical perspectives about Social learning theory, attitudes and theory of planned behaviour
Social learning theory which was given by Albert Bandura focuses on importance of
understanding, observing, modelling and attitudes as well as reaction of others. Social learning
helps in understanding how different factors such as cognitive and environmental factors helps in
influencing learning and behaviour of human. During social learning theory Albert Bandura have
engaged with learning theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. It is been
analysed that people learn from their surroundings and behave in certain ways. In society, people
are surrounded by various type of people which possess different personalities and it is possible
that people can be influenced by the personality of people around them. People pay closer
attention to people around them and tries to understand their behaviour and at later stages people
may follow behaviour of people which are around them. People might do this regardless of the
gender and might try to copy behaviour and attitude of people which are around them. Albert
Bandura stated that learning is an complicated process and it can be influenced from people
around them and he also stated that observation and modelling plays crucial role in learning
procedure of any individual. His idea is that people learn through observations as people focuses
on learning from their surrounding and adapt to environment in which people live. Bandura
stated that children learn and adapt behaviours which are around them and tries to understand
and observe what people around them do. Children imitate behaviours which are observed in
other people by them (Ells, (2018)).

Social learning theory application can be understood in such a way that it is used to
understand aggressive and psychological disorders in people and social learning theory helps in
understanding that from where people adapted that kind of behaviour or attitude. Social learning
theory stated that observational learning plays vital role in adapting to behaviour and it also help
people in adapting to their surrounding and learning from their surroundings.
Bandura stated that children from observational learning and children develop their
behaviour by analysing people surrounding and by watching them. This occurs through four
different stages such as learning where child begins to pay attention to peers who are closed to
them and children focuses on imitating people who are close to them. Children then keep the
behaviour and retain it as it have to pay attention to. This includes understanding actions
displayed by the people surrounding them and responses received by the children. After that
children starts to imitate that same behaviour with the aim to receive similar response as the
people whom they imitated and in the final step if response which is received by them is
according to children then they will motivated and focuses on imitating that behaviour again
(Heianza, (2017)).
Under assumptions of social learning theory first one is classical conditioning in which it
is explained that people learn through simple pattern of stimulus and response. Operant
conditioning provides an extra layer to this as people can relate their behaviour with their
surroundings. There are various issues which are addressed by the help of social learning theory
such as aggression and violence in which it is considered as major aspect of this learning theory.
Children might imitate aggressive behaviour as they observe people around them and develop
aggressive behaviour. Criminal behaviour of people is also understood by this theory as various
factors such as social attitudes, rewards and punishments are some aspects which determine the
likelihood of people engaging in criminal activities. Personality development of children also
understood by this theory as skills in children might come from their surrounding which can be
understood by social learning theory.
There are different social and biological determinant of an healthy eating behaviour.
Biological determinants includes a taste, hunger and appetite. Whereas social determinants
include family, culture, meal pattern and peers. Hunger is the physiological need which is refers
to the basic determinant of food choice. Nutrition and energy is a requirement of human for
survival and respond to feeling of satiety and hunger which is provide appetite satisfaction.

Human are highly attracted towards taste, hunger and appetite. In relevance to this, individual
that attract towards better taste whether it has healthy or not. People generally attracted towards
junk food and fast food which is not benefit for their better health and increases the risk of
obesity within them. In relevance to this, there is need to decrease such type of determinant to
influence healthy and hygienic food that can help to reduce the risk of obesity within individual
and make a community with less cases of obesity. Society determinants also attract individual
regarding various type of meal which is generally influenced by a family and culture
(Commodore-Mensah, (2018)). According to family income, individual like to consume food
which is either healthy or not. It depends on their family income which influence them to take
nutritional food. Culture also influence to take nutritional food because every culture have their
on tradition for having meal of different nutrition. This create attraction towards some specific
type of nutritional meal which is related with healthy diet and influence to take hygienic and
healthy food for reducing the risk of obesity. Social determinant are highly able to influence
individual for taking different type of nutritional food which create behaviour of the individual
for consuming various food material which can either be healthy or unhealthy according to
choice of individual and due to social determinant of peers or friends.
Human attitude also impact on deciding on a taking various type of meal. Attitude of
individual can high level to influence the choice of meal and can directly impact the human
health attitude regarding choice of meal and make people influenced to select healthy food or
focus on taste. When an individual attitude focus on healthy food rather than choice of tasty food
with unhealthy and unhygienic food that can influence better health of individual and reduces the
risk of obesity. Whereas, individual attract towards the testy food which can make attitude
regarding choice of junk food or fast food which is highly able to impact the better health of
individual and can lead to create obesity within them. Such type of choice can lead to create
chance of obesity and influence individual to consume and healthy food which can also create
negative impact on their health.
Planned behaviour regarding taking food or meal can create a direct impact on health of
individual and can able to influence or reduce the risk of obesity within them. Planned behaviour
is highly applicable for providing better healthy food which can help to reduce the chance of
obesity within individual and influence positive health to the individual. This is related with

consumption of healthy and hygienic food which have various type of nutrients for better growth
and development of individual (Schmidt, (2018)).
Food have the property of influence in growth and development of the individual which
depends upon the taking and consuming of quality of food. When individual take nutritional and
any food that can influence a better health and effective growth and development of individual.
Whereas, conjunction of fast food or junk food can lead to create a negative impact on the
development of individual and may also impact better health and need to create high risk of
obesity. Fast food or junk food have amount of fatty ingredient which increases fat within body
and create high risk of obesity by formation of fat (Leroux, (2021)).
Data of rate of obesity in UK
There are different age groups in the UK which has been impacted with obesity. In
context to this, there is some of the discussion about rate of obesity in different age group of UK
population which are going to be discussed further.
Age group of children ages 2 to 17 years are having 14.8% rate of obesity within them.
Whereas, childhood obesity among aged 2 to 5 years old is about 10% and 12 to 17 years old
have a 17.9 percent of obesity rate. Adult ages above 18 and 18 have the rate of 41.2 % of
obesity which is highly progressive among old age group (Sharma, (2019)). In comparison to
middle age adult obesity rate are lowest among 18 to 28 years adult which is about 22.4 %.
Whereas, adult age between 45 to 74 have high rate of obesity (Bello-Chavolla, (2021)). There is
need to control the rate of obesity in adult which can be directly influenced by changing attitude
and influencing planned behaviour which can make them consume healthy and hygienic food
which is highly beneficial for their better health and also reduces the risk of obesity within them.
There are different age group and individual within United Kingdom which they need to take
healthy and quality food to fulfill the need of nutrition for better growth and development
(Sheng, (2017)).

Recommendation
It is recommended to utilize organic food and reduce the consumption of fast food or
junk food which can impact the health. Organic food have various quality and are highly
beneficial for better growth and development of individual. This also fulfill the need of nutrients
which can influence and improve growth and development of the individual creating and
reducing consumption of fast food or junk food. This can help individual to reduce the rate of
obesity within large population and to improve better health. It is recommended to consume
healthy and hygienic organic food which is highly beneficial for better growth and development
of individual and large population and can help help to reduce the pressure of finance and
services for the treatment of obesity within large population. This can plays an important role to
reduce the level of obesity and influencing healthy eating behaviour within individual (Black,
(2017)).
CONCLUSION
From above discussion, it can be concluded that healthy diet plays an important role in
controlling and influencing risk of obesity within large population. Every individual need to
consume healthy and hygienic food which can influence better health and growth and

development for the large population. Unhealthy food increases the risk of obesity which require
better treatment for consequences of obesity which increases risk of heart problem, diabetes,
certain cancer and many more. In this report, there is discussion about knowledge and
understanding about the theoretical perspective of social learning theory, attitude and theory of
planned behaviour. This also includes information related with rate of obesity in different age
group of United Kingdom. There is also recommendation for reducing rate of obesity within
country.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bello-Chavolla, (2021). Unequal impact of structural health determinants and comorbidity on
COVID-19 severity and lethality in older Mexican adults: Considerations beyond
chronological aging. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 76(3), e52-e59.
Black, (2017). Getting weighed down: The effect of childhood obesity on the development of
socioemotional skills. Journal of Human Capital, 11(2), 263-295.
Commodore-Mensah, (2018). African Americans, African immigrants, and Afro-Caribbeans
differ in social determinants of hypertension and diabetes: evidence from the National
Health Interview Survey. Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities, 5(5), 995-1002.
Ells, (2018). Interventions for treating children and adolescents with overweight and obesity: an
overview of Cochrane reviews. International Journal of Obesity, 42(11), 1823-1833.
Heianza, (2017). Gene-diet interaction and precision nutrition in obesity. International journal of
molecular sciences, 18(4), 787.
Kinlen, (2018). Complications of obesity. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, 111(7),
437-443.
Leroux, (2021). Quantifying the predictive performance of objectively measured physical
activity on mortality in the UK Biobank. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 76(8),
1486-1494.
Schmidt, (2018). Determinants of physical, affective, and cognitive fatigue during breast cancer
therapy and 12 months follow‐up. International journal of cancer, 142(6), 1148-1157.
Sharma, (2019). A systematic review and meta‐analysis estimating the population prevalence of
comorbidities in children and adolescents aged 5 to 18 years. Obesity Reviews, 20(10),
1341-1349.
Sheng, (2017). Associations between obesity and spinal diseases: a medical expenditure panel
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