NDT 2126: Food Environment and Eating Behaviour

Eating with Others

• Eating with others can have a significant impact on food consumption.

Obesity Rates

• Population groups with the highest poverty rates have the highest rates of obesity.

Media Influence

• Media is not a significant source of food and nutrition information for people.

Food Choice and Motives

• The term that encompasses food choice and motives, feeding practices, dieting, and eating-related problems is eating behavior.

Food Environments

• Food environments are influenced by physical, social, economic, cultural, and political factors.

Human Development

• The periods of human development over the lifespan are: prenatal (conception to birth), infancy and toddlerhood (birth to 2 years old), early childhood (2 years old to 6 years old), and all of the above.

Genetic Factors

• Genetic regions associated with taste, sensory, satiety are factors influencing eating behavior.

Food Deserts

• Food deserts are characterized by insufficient availability of healthy foods, particularly fruits and vegetables.

School Food Environment

• Unhealthy foods and beverages were readily available, affordable, and desirable in many school settings.

Older Adults

• Older adults experience a decline in appetite, taste, and smell leading to decreased food intake, poor food palatability, and potential failure to develop sensory specific satiety.

Stages of Human Development

• The stages of human development with their age range are:
  • Infancy and toddlerhood: birth to 2 years old
  • Early childhood: 2 years old to 6 years old
  • Adolescence: onset of puberty to 18 years old

Rural vs. Urban Areas

• Rural areas had poorer mean intake of fruits and vegetables compared to urban areas.

Eating Behavior

• Eating behavior encompasses food choice and motives, feeding practices, dieting, and food-induced disorders.

Food Preference Shift

• Typically, 8-10 exposures are necessary before a food preference shift in children.

Developmental Model of Eating Behavior

• The developmental model of eating behavior focuses on learning through exposure, social learning, and associative learning.

Cognition and Food Choice

• The cognition model of food choice explores the extent to which cognition predicts and explains behavior.

Personal Dietary Choices

• Some personal dietary choices that influence human health are food choices, motives, and feeding practices.

Taste Preferences

• We are born with unlearned biological predispositions towards liking sweet tastes.
• Liking for salt develops right after birth.
• Umami is related to savory tastes.

Meal Size and Variety

• Greater variety of food stimulates bigger meal size and greater food intake due to nutrient-specific satiety.

Food Acceptance

• Factors that influence food acceptance are conditioned food preferences and aversions, physiological conditioning, and social-affective context and parenting practices.

Eating Behavior Influencers

• Factors that influence eating behavior are physiological, social, economic, cultural, and political factors.

Food Environment and Health

• The built environment in relation to food and physical activity has important impacts on health.

Healthy Food Environment

• A healthy food environment inside and around schools refers to spaces, infrastructure, conditions, nutritional content of foods, information availability, marketing, pricing, etc.

School-Based Food and Nutrition Education

• School-based food and nutrition education actively involves all people that interact in the school setting.

Home-Grown School Feeding Approach

• The main goal of the Home-Grown School Feeding approach is to promote healthier food patterns.

Home Food Environment

• The availability and accessibility of nutrient-dense foods in the home environment increase the likelihood of children choosing to eat obesity-protective foods.
• Parents can influence children's eating patterns by role modeling and making healthy food choices available.

Food Availability and Consumption

• High availability of obesity risk-factor foods predict higher consumption according to the content.
• Stockpiling of foods in the home may decrease consumption for preferred and convenient products.

Home Environment and Eating Patterns

• Children's eating patterns are strongly influenced by their environmental characteristics.
• The home environment plays a role in influencing childhood obesity risk.

Home Environment Elements

• Some elements of the home environment that impact eating and activity-related behaviors, especially for children, are availability and accessibility of foods, parental role modeling, and peer influence.

Impacts of Food Availability

• The availability of foods in the home can promote eating behaviors, increase intake of high calorie and high sugary snacks/beverages, and decrease energy expenditure.

Family Socioeconomic Status

• Family socioeconomic status has an influence on dietary habits and obesity.

Parenting Styles

• Authoritative parenting styles are warm, firm, and accepting of children's needs for autonomy, set limits based on reasoning.
• Authoritarian parenting styles are firm but not warm, set rigid limits, and employ punitive actions.