Food Folio by Columbia Center for Eating Disorders: A Freely Available Food Image Database

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Behavioral science
• Eating disorder research

Background:

• Standardized stimulus sets are crucial for reproducible research on cognitive processes and eating behavior.
• The Food Folio, a collection of 138 Western food images, was developed by the Columbia Center for Eating Disorders.
• This set includes foods commonly eaten or avoided by individuals with eating disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To comprehensively characterize the Food Folio stimulus set through large-scale public ratings.
• To provide detailed attribute data for optimizing stimulus selection in research.
• To enhance the utility of the Food Folio for studying eating behavior and cognition.

Main Methods:

• 1054 participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk rated 138 food images on 17 subjective and nutritional attributes.
• Exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis were used to identify underlying dimensions and food groupings.
• Physical image properties and nutritional information were also compiled for each food item.

Main Results:

• Food images were rated on dimensions including tastiness, healthiness, texture, and nutrient content (fat, carbohydrates).
• Factor analysis identified three latent factors: healthiness, tastiness, and umami taste.
• Cluster analysis revealed five distinct food clusters based on these dimensions.

Conclusions:

• The characterized Food Folio stimulus set offers a diverse range of foods varying across multiple attributes.
• This comprehensive data enables researchers to select optimized stimuli for diverse research questions.
• The set is valuable for investigating eating behavior and cognition in both healthy and clinical populations, including those with eating disorders.