Sociocultural and Environmental Influences on Brazilian Immigrant Mothers’ Beliefs and Practices Related to Child Feeding and Weight Status

Background Length of residence in the United States (US), changes in dietary and physical activity behaviors, and economic and social barriers contribute to high childhood obesity rates among children from immigrant families in the US. Brazilians comprise a fast-growing immigrant population group in the US, yet little research has focused on health issues affecting Brazilian children in immigrant families. Understanding sociocultural and environmental influences on parents’ beliefs and practices related to child feeding and weight status is essential to altering obesity trends in this group. Methods Qualitative study consisting of five focus groups with a convenience sample of 29 Brazilian immigrant mothers. Results Analyses revealed that the sociocultural and environment transitions faced by Brazilian immigrant mothers’ influence their beliefs and practices related to child feeding and weight status. Additionally, acculturation emerged as a factor affecting mothers’ feeding practices and their children’s eating habits, with mothers preferring Brazilian food environments and that their children preferring American food environments. Mothers viewed themselves as being responsible for promoting and maintaining their children’s healthy eating and feeding behaviors, but changes in their social and cultural environments due to immigration and the pressures and demands of raising a family in a new country make this difficult. Conclusions Health promotion interventions to improve healthful eating and feeding practices of Brazilian children in immigrant families must account for social and cultural changes and daily life demands due to immigration as well as potential variation in the levels of acculturation between mothers and their children.     

Consumer behaviors towards ready-to-eat foods based on food-related lifestyles in Korea

The purpose of this study was to examine consumers'' behaviors toward ready-to-eat foods and to develop ready-to-eat food market segmentation in Korea. The food-related lifestyle and purchase behaviors of ready-to-eat foods were evaluated using 410 ready-to-eat food consumers in the Republic of Korea. Four factors were extracted by exploratory factor analysis (health-orientation, taste-orientation, convenience-orientation, and tradition-orientation) to explain the ready-to eat food consumers'' food-related lifestyles. The results of cluster analysis indicated that "tradition seekers" and "convenience seekers" should be regarded as the target segments. Chi-square tests and t-tests of the subdivided groups showed there were significant differences across marital status, education level, family type, eating-out expenditure, place of purchase, and reason for purchase. In conclusion, the tradition seekers consumed more ready-to-eat foods from discount marts or specialty stores and ate them between meals more often than the convenience seekers. In contrast, the convenience seekers purchased more ready-to-eat foods at convenience stores and ate them as meals more often than the tradition seekers. These findings suggest that ready-to-eat food market segmentation based on food-related lifestyles can be applied to develop proper marketing strategies.     

Cross-Sectional Associations between Mothers and Children’s Breakfast Routine—The Feel4Diabetes-Study

Positive influences of family members have been associated with a high probability of children’s daily breakfast consumption. Therefore, the aim of this study was to scrutinize the association of breakfast routines between mothers and their children. The baseline data of the Feel4Diabetes-study was obtained in 9760 children (49.05% boys)–mother pairs in six European countries. A parental self-reported questionnaire gauging the frequency of breakfast consumption and of breakfast´ foods and beverages consumption was used. Agreement in routines of mothers and their children’s breakfast consumption was analyzed in sex-specific crosstabs. The relationship of breakfast routine and food groups’ consumption between mothers and their children was assessed with analysis of covariance. The highest proportion of children who always consumed breakfast were those whose mothers always consumed it. Children consuming breakfast regularly had a higher intake of milk or unsweetened dairy products and all kind of cereal products (low fiber and whole-grain) than occasional breakfast consumers (p < 0.05). The strong similarity between mothers and children suggests a transfer of breakfast routine from mothers to their children, as a high proportion of children who usually consume breakfast were from mothers also consuming breakfast. All breakfast foods and beverages consumption frequencies were similar between children and their mothers.     

"A lot of sacrifices:" work-family spillover and the food choice coping strategies of low-wage employed parents

Integrating their work and family lives is an everyday challenge for employed parents. Competing demands for parents' time and energy may contribute to fewer meals prepared or eaten at home and poorer nutritional quality of meals. Thus, work-family spillover (feelings, attitudes, and behaviors carried over from one role to another) is a phenomenon with implications for nutrition and health. The aim of this theory-guided constructivist research was to understand how low-wage employed parents' experiences of work-family spillover affected their food choice coping strategies. Participants were 69 black, white and Latino mothers and fathers in a Northeastern US city. We explored participants' understandings of family and work roles, spillover, and food choice strategies using open-ended qualitative interviews. Data analysis was based on the constant comparative method. These parents described affective, evaluative, and behavioral instances of work-family spillover and role overload as normative parts of everyday life and dominant influences on their food choices. They used food choice coping strategies to: (1) manage feelings of stress and fatigue, (2) reduce the time and effort for meals, (3) redefine meanings and reduce expectations for food and eating, and (4) set priorities and trade off food and eating against other family needs. Only a few parents used adaptive strategies that changed work or family conditions to reduce the experience of conflict. Most coping strategies were aimed at managing feelings and redefining meanings, and were inadequate for reducing the everyday hardships from spillover and role overload. Some coping strategies exacerbated feelings of stress. These findings have implications for family nutrition, food expenditures, nutritional self-efficacy, social connections, food assistance policy, and work place strategies.     

Contrasting approaches to ‘doing’ family meals: a qualitative study of how parents frame children’s food preferences

Family meals, as acts of domestic food provisioning, are shaped by the competing influences of household resources, food preferences and broader cultural norms around dietary practices. The place of children’s food tastes in family meal practices is particularly complex. Food tastes stand in a reciprocal relationship with family food practices: being both an influence on and a product of them. This paper explores how parents think about and respond to their children’s food preferences in relation to family meal practices. A qualitative study was conducted with residents of Sandwell, UK. The results presented here are based on the responses of nine key participants and their families. Photo elicitation methods generated participant food photo diaries that were used to inform subsequent interviews. A thematic analysis revealed two contrasting ways of incorporating children’s tastes into family meal routines: (1) ‘what we fancy’ and (2) ‘regulated’. The former entails repeatedly consulting and negotiating with children over what to cook for each meal. It is supported by the practical strategies of multiple and individually modified meals. The latter relies upon parents developing a repertoire of meals that ‘work’ for the family. This repertoire is performed as a series of ‘set meals’ in which any requests for variation are strongly resisted. Our findings add to the small body of literature on household food provisioning and suggest that achieving the idealised ritual of the family meal is underpinned by a range of values and strategies, some of which may run counter to health messages about nutrition.     

Health and fitness series--4. Getting children to develop a healthy relationship with food

The author, a dietitian, discusses the trend in the UK towards children developing unhealthy relationships with food. This is manifested as overeating leading to overweight or obesity, or a desire, even among younger children, to follow slimming diets that can adversely affect growth and development. Rather than food restriction, a healthy relationship with food involves young people being able to self-regulate their intake and enjoy all the components of a balanced diet. The author emphasises the importance of mothers as role models in helping their children develop a healthy relationship with food. Physical activity should be encouraged, preferably for the whole family.     

Mothers reframing physical activity: family oriented politicism, transgression and contested expertise in Australia

Mothers of young children are a population sub-group with one of the lowest levels of physical activity. This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study with 40 Australian mothers of children under school age. The research aimed to understand the tensions, dilemmas and trade-offs which women experience around physical activity within the contexts of their everyday lives as mothers of young children. The analysis shows that, in contrast to health promotion messages which frame physical activity as a positive and healthy behaviour, mothers of young children perceive activity as being both enhancing and threatening to their health and social relationships. Restrictive stereotypes of the 'good' mother make it difficult for many women to prioritise their own physical activity needs over their childrearing and domestic responsibilities. Nevertheless, women's involvement in physical activity is often underpinned by the maternal 'ethic of care' as something which can help them cope better with the challenges of being a mother and contribute to the wellbeing of the family. This article takes as its departure point the notion that the maternal 'ethic of care' creates previously unrecognised opportunities in relation to physical activity. For many mothers, physical activity can also be a way of challenging hegemonic discourses and extending what it means to be a good mother in contemporary society. Although largely overlooked by contemporary health promotion, it is women's family-oriented politicism and resistance to dominant meanings about motherhood, health and the 'ideal' body which create alternative possibilities for their participation and enjoyment of physical activity during early motherhood.     

Family themes of food refusal: disciplining the body and punishing the family

A problematic issue in studying anorexia nervosa (AN) has been the absence of a qualitative study that probes the deep meanings of food refusal. We attempt to close this gap by studying the family meanings of food refusal by a single case study of a family in Hong Kong with an AN daughter. Eight videotapes of family therapy sessions, each lasting 90 minutes, were intensively reviewed, transcribed verbatim, and content analyzed. Two family themes of food refusal were discerned: the AN daughter disciplined her body and punished her family. The conclusions imply a need to revisit the Chinese gender role expectation in understanding AN patients and their families.     

Two minus one is one… plus a whole lot more: Coping with life as a single parent

A problematic issue in studying anorexia nervosa (AN) has been the absence of a qualitative study that probes the deep meanings of food refusal. We attempt to close this gap by studying the family meanings of food refusal by a single case study of a family in Hong Kong with an AN daughter. Eight videotapes of family therapy sessions, each lasting 90 minutes, were intensively reviewed, transcribed verbatim, and content analyzed. Two family themes of food refusal were discerned: the AN daughter disciplined her body and punished her family. The conclusions imply a need to revisit the Chinese gender role expectation in understanding AN patients and their families.     

Infant feeding practices of the Igbo,Nigeria

The pattern of infant feeding and attitudes of the mothers towards breast feeding, morbidity and mortality of a sample of the Nigerian Igbo tribe was studied. The result showed that:

• Ninety‐four percent of all mothers breast fed their infants for at least six months. The duration was longer among the non‐educated than the educated mothers.

• The size of the family decreased with increases in educational attainment. Eighty percent of the mothers gave their babies supplementary food between 3–7 months of age. A special weaning diet was used by 49 percent of the educated mothers and 27 percent of the non‐educated mothers.

• Twenty percent of the children has at least one attack of diarrhoea before the age of six months. One out of every eleven children was admitted at least once to the hospital before the end of six months.

The prevalence of diarrhoea, malnutrition and possibly death could be attributed to a number of factors. These include: the introduction of supplementary food too early in unsanitary conditions, the ignorance of the mothers of what the weaning diet should constitute, the large number of children in the family, and the unhiegienic environment.     

'Trying to make it all come together': structuration and employed mothers' experience of family food provisioning in Canada

This research examined the aetiology of employed mothers' food choice and food provisioning decisions using a qualitative, grounded theory methodology. Semi-structured interviews using the Food Choice Map were conducted with eleven middle-income employed mothers of elementary school-age children. Results demonstrated that the women exhibited conflicting identities with respect to food choice and provisioning. As 'good mothers' they were the primary food and nutrition caregivers for the family, desiring to provide healthy, homemade foods their families preferred at shared family meals. They also sought to be independent selves, working outside the home, within the context of a busy modern family. Increased food autonomy of children, and lack of time due to working outside the home and children's involvement in extracurricular activities, were significant influences on their food choice and provisioning. This resulted in frequently being unable to live up to their expectations of consistently providing healthy homemade foods and having shared family meals. To cope, the women frequently relied on processed convenience and fast foods despite their acknowledged inferior nutritional status. Using Giddens' structuration theory, the dynamic relationships between the women's food choice and provisioning actions, their identities and larger structures including socio-cultural norms, conditions of work and the industrial food system were explored. The ensuing dietary pattern of the women and their families increases the risk of poor health outcomes, including obesity. These results have implications for public health responses to improve population health by shifting the focus from individual-level maternal influences to structural influences on diet.     

A construct analysis of meal convenience applied to military foods

The present research investigates the concept of food convenience within the institutional framework of military feeding. The approach views food-related convenience in terms of two broad dimensions: "type of convenience" and "timing of convenience." A discrete choice experiment was conducted with US military personnel (n=179) regarding their perceptions of the (in)convenience associated with the use and consumption of low-preparation, all-in-one, military meals (MREs-meals, ready-to-eat). The obtained data strongly suggest that perceived (in)convenience, time and effort are separate constructs. A food provisioning process perspective was captured in the "timing of convenience" dimension, and the contribution of different stages in the consumption process to the perceived convenience of the meal situation was empirically demonstrated. The latter result has important implications for the study of food convenience outside this specific population and context. As opposed to the product perspective that is currently predominant in the literature, it demonstrates the necessity of adopting a meal perspective in analysing food-related convenience.     

"That feeling of not feeling": numbing the pain for substance-dependent African American women

Using ethnographic methodology, the author uncovered the meanings and expressions of recovery care for substance-dependent African American women residing in an inner-city transitional home for substance abuse. A convenience sample of 12 key and 18 general participants revealed emotional pain associated with negative life experiences, including overt and covert racism, primarily within society but also within their family networks; and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse from parents, siblings, and male relationships. The women described feelings of abandonment associated with the death of loved ones, particularly mothers. They had attempted to numb their emotional pain with alcohol and drugs. As they moved through treatment and recovery, they began to work through past and current painful life experiences without using alcohol and drugs.     

Feasibility of an Individualized,Home-Based Obesity Prevention Program for Preschool-Age Children

This study explored the feasibility and acceptability of an individualized, home-based routines intervention targeting preschool-age children's everyday sleeping and eating routines. Using a one-group, pre–post design (N?=?11), single mothers with 3- to 5-year-old children participated in an intervention over 6 weeks. Data (self-report, actigraphy, and family mealtime observations) were collected at baseline and 1-month post intervention. Mothers found the intervention acceptable, and point estimates for the intervention effects were in the expected direction. Individualized, home-based interventions targeting everyday mealtime and sleep routines hold promise in assisting mothers with developing and sustaining their children's healthy behaviors and decreasing their overweight and obesity risks.     

Food provision and the meal situation in elderly care – outcomes in different social contexts

BACKGROUND: Nutritional problems concerning older people in care can be affected both by their illness and by the standard procedures surrounding food provision, for example rigid routines of food supply and ritualized mealtime situations. METHOD: The aim was to study how organizational structure and staff members' routines and actions influence activities related to food and meals in different caring context in Sweden. The qualitative methodology chosen for this study was participant observation. RESULT: Care recipients were given different opportunities concerning what, how, when and with whom to eat, depending on where their meals were served. In restaurants, older people could choose from several foods and they could also choose the time of and company for the meal. At care units with 'part-of-day' care or 'around-the-clock' care, food choices, time and company were limited, especially at the units with 'around-the-clock' care, where the most ailing older people lived. CONCLUSIONS: Food provision and the mealtime situation for the elderly are shaped by the individual's living arrangements, and the social organization surrounding it, not determined by the individual's needs and wishes, including social and cultural meanings of food and meals, which could, thereby, affect nutritional intake.     

Attitudes and food habits--a review.

The inadequacy of a definition of attitudinal terms has complicated the interpretation of many food habit studies. This review has focused on the multidimensional character of the word "attitude" as an aid to gaining insight into food habit development and change. The five definitional categories presented (attitudes as preferences, as overt food behavior, as willingness or ability to change, as agreement among family members, and as complexity of meanings) do not preclude other definitions. Knowledge of attitude studies can foster understanding of the link between nutritional knowledge and actual behavior, as well as help practitioners to be more effective in formulating objectives and developing techniques for nutrition education. The various dimensions and meanings of attitudes indicate the need for continued research to clarify the effect of well defined attitude variables on food habits.