Identity and eating behaviors: a scoping review (Gerber & Folta 2022)

Research paper

Gerber S, Folta SC. You Are What You Eat… But Do You Eat What You Are? The Role of Identity in Eating Behaviors—A Scoping Review. Nutrients. 2022;14(17):3456. doi:10.3390/nu14173456. PMCID: PMC9458161.

Why we cite it

The definitive scoping review on identity and eating behavior — 100 articles spanning 76 years (1946-2022), finding that identity was significantly related to eating behavior in 99 of 100 studies. This near-universal finding provides the strongest possible evidence base for the project's identity-based approach. Also reveals that identity measurement quality is generally poor (mean 2.9/5) and identity remains underutilized in eating interventions, suggesting this is an evidence-supported but underexploited lever. Synthesizes and validates the individual findings from cib01-05.