Abstract
Argues that the determinants of food choice are many and varied but all mediated by the individual's thought processes: perceptual affective and behaviour-deciding. Models of these attitudinal variables such as the theory of planned behaviour have been increasingly successful in predicting food choices from people's answers to questions about their reasons for choosing. However, not all food choices can be given an exhaustive rationale and so models which recognize this, such as the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion and causal analysis of individual choice, are likely to carry forward our understanding of the thought processes underlying food choices.