The Impact of Parents' Perceptions of the Food Quality Within Their Neighborhood and Most Frequented Food Stores and the Distance to Food Stores on Children's Diet Quality

The Impact of Parents' Perceptions of the Food Quality Within Their Neighborhood and Most Frequented Food Stores and the Distance to Food Stores on Children's Diet Quality
Author: Katharine Olivia Lutz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2013
Genre: Food
ISBN:

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, which could signal an unprecedented shift in lifespan, with the current generation living a short life than their parents. Although there are a variety of contributing factors, some of the largest gains in childhood obesity reduction could come from examining the relationship between the neighborhood food environment and children's diet quality (DQ). While many studies have investigated the influence of distance to supermarkets on adults' DQ, few have examined the effects on young children. Further, studies have rarely considered parents' perceptions of local food quality as a predictor of children's DQ, nor have studies used the parents' frequented food store (FFS) as the measure of exposure. Finally, there remains a need to assess if parents travel farther for food shopping when their perceptions of neighborhood food quality differ from their perceptions of food quality at their FFS, because this additional travel burden may be prohibitive to healthy food procurement. Participants were 686 parent-child pairs from the Neighborhood Impact on Kids (NIK) Study. Parents' perceptions of neighborhood and FFS quality were assessed via survey. Children's DQ was measured as adherence to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) eating plan's overall and fruit and vegetable (F&V) recommendations through three, random 24-hour dietary recalls. FFSs were identified via survey and street network distances from home to the store were calculated via GIS. Linear regression analyses assessed the associations between parents' perceptions and child DQ as well as distance to the FFS and child DQ. A paired t-test determined if parents held discordant views about food quality between their neighborhood and FFS, and Spearman rank correlation coefficients assessed the association between discordance and food shopping distance. No statistically significant associations were found between parents' perceptions of FFS quality and children's overall DASH score in the adjusted analyses; however, the F&V component DASH score remained significant (p=.05). The adjusted models indicated that increasing distance to the parents' FFS improved children's overall and F&V component DASH scores. Parents' views of food quality within their neighborhood versus FFS differed, with FFSs receiving more positive assessments. Discordant views were weakly and significantly associated with distance to the FFS (r=-0.1, p=.01). Parents' perceptions of the food quality at their FFS are only weakly associated with children's DQ. This may be due to the fact that many factors impact food choice decision-making. The finding that children's DQ improved with increasing distance to the FFS suggested that parents valued healthfulness and were willing to travel farther to procure healthy, affordable food. Additionally, restricting the focus to just the relationship between the home and the FFS may have obscured the true nature of the food environment-diet quality relationship, and future studies should include other common destinations in one's daily activity space (e.g. work or school).

Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequences

Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequences
Author: Michele Ver Ploeg
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2010-02
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1437921345

The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 directed the U.S. Dept. of Agr. to conduct a 1-year study to assess the extent of areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, identify characteristics and causes of such areas, consider how limited access affects local populations, and outline recommend. to address the problem. This report presents the findings of the study, which include results from two conferences of national and internat. authorities on food deserts and a set of research studies. It also includes reviews of existing literature, a national-level assessment of access to large grocery stores and supermarkets, analysis of the economic and public health effects of limited access, and a discussion of existing policy interventions. Illus.

Parents' Perceived and Objective Food Environment and the Association with Their Child's Health and Nutrition

Parents' Perceived and Objective Food Environment and the Association with Their Child's Health and Nutrition
Author: Emily Kee
Publisher:
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2016
Genre: Children
ISBN: 9781369538069

The built food environment, defined as a set of factors including availability of fresh foods, proximity of food, prices of food, availability of assistance, and community characteristics that interact to influence food choices and diet, has been found to have an impact on health and nutrition. Therefore, this study examined the effect of neighborhood food environment on child health and nutrition. Specifically, the parents' perceptions of their food environments along with the objective food environment were analyzed in addition to the diet intake and the body mass index of children of ages two to five. 83 parents in an urban and suburban region of Illinois, from generally low socioeconomic status backgrounds, were surveyed on their perceptions of their food environment using Freedman's Perception of Food Environment Scales and were asked to report the last four weeks of their child's dietary intake by the Harvard Service Food Frequency Questionnaire. Residential addresses were coded to census tracts and scored by the modified Retail Food Environment Index. Pearson correlations and ANOVA were used to test the association between neighborhood food environment measures (perceived and mRFEI) and child's BMI and dietary intake. Results showed that improved parental perceptions of food environment were significantly correlated with increased vegetable intake among the children (r(78)=.322, p=.004) and decreased sweetened beverage intake (r(83)=-.226, p=.040). In addition, improved food environment was associated with decreased grain, dairy, salty snack, and meat consumption. Objective and perceived food environments were weakly associated, if at all, and perceptions of the food environment seemed to have a stronger impact on the children's dietary intake than the objective food environment, suggesting that improvements in awareness of food availability, education, and promotion of fresh and healthy foods may have an impact on improving children's dietary intake.

The 100-Mile Diet

The 100-Mile Diet
Author: Alisa Smith
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2009-02-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0307371174

The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment. When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born. The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep. The 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, attracting media and grassroots interest that spanned the globe. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating tells the full story, from the insights to the kitchen disasters, as the authors transform from megamart shoppers to self-sufficient urban pioneers. The 100-Mile Diet is a pathway home for anybody, anywhere. Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, “the staff of life,” that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita’s Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita’s nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie? —From The 100-Mile Diet

Local Food Systems; Concepts, Impacts, and Issues

Local Food Systems; Concepts, Impacts, and Issues
Author: Steve Martinez
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 87
Release: 2010-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1437933629

This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

How Food Away from Home Affects Children's Diet Quality

How Food Away from Home Affects Children's Diet Quality
Author: Lisa Mancino
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2010
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1437940846

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. This study includes estimates of how each child¿s consumption of food away from home, food from school, and caloric sweetened beverages affects that child¿s diet quality and calorie consumption. Compared with meals and snacks prepared at home, food prepared away from home increases caloric intake of children, esp. older children. Each food-away-from-home meal adds 108 more calories to daily total intake among children ages 13-18 than a snack or meal from home. Both food away from home and all food from school also lower the daily diet quality of older children. Among younger children, the effect of food from school on caloric intake and diet quality does not differ significantly from that of food from home. Charts and tables.

How Well Do Parents Assess Their Children's Diet?

How Well Do Parents Assess Their Children's Diet?
Author: Jessica Eliason
Publisher:
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2019
Genre: Children
ISBN:

Objective: Parents play a critical role in their child's diets, yet there is lack of research in the US comparing parental perception of their child's diet with quantitatively assessed diet quality. We examined the association between parent perception of their child's overall diet and the child's diet quality, as measured by frequency of consumption of key food categories. Methods: Secondary analysis was conducted using data from two independent cross- sectional panels of surveys with parents of a 3-18 year old child. Data collection took place in 2009-2010 and 2014, the random sample was drawn from low-income cities. Well-established survey questions assessed parental perception of their child's diet and frequency of consumption of fruits, vegetables, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), fast food and unhealthy snacks. Diet quality scores were calculated for each child, with higher scores reflective of healthier diets (max score= 40). Ordered logistic regressions examined associations between parental perception and consumption of food categories. Multinomial logistic regressions examined associations between levels of concordance in parent perception and diet scores by demographic sub-groups. Results: Almost half of children were non-Hispanic black (46%) and 40% were Hispanic. Overall 52% of parents strongly agreed, 33% somewhat agreed,10% somewhat disagreed, and 4% strongly disagreed that their child eats a healthy diet. The mean diet quality score for the sample was 20.58 ± 6.7. Children from our sample with the unhealthiest diet had a mean frequency of fruit intake = 0.8 times/day and SSBs = 2.2 times/day. Children with the healthiest diet had a mean consumption of fruit=1.7/day an SSBs= 0.4/day. Parental perception of their child's diet was significantly higher when their child consumed more fruit (p

Food Literacy

Food Literacy
Author: Helen Vidgen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2016-04-14
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1317483022

Globally, the food system and the relationship of the individual to that system, continues to change and grow in complexity. Eating is an everyday event that is part of everyone’s lives. There are many commentaries on the nature of these changes to what, where and how we eat and their socio-cultural, environmental, educational, economic and health consequences. Among this discussion, the term "food literacy" has emerged to acknowledge the broad role food and eating play in our lives and the empowerment that comes from meeting food needs well. In this book, contributors from Australia, China, United Kingdom and North America provide a review of international research on food literacy and how this can be applied in schools, health care settings and public education and communication at the individual, group and population level. These varying perspectives will give the reader an introduction to this emerging concept. The book gathers current insights and provides a platform for discussion to further understanding and application in this field. It stimulates the reader to conceptualise what food literacy means to their practice and to critically review its potential contribution to a range of outcomes.

The Relationship of Parents' Perceptions of Their Health and Communication with Their Young Children about Food

The Relationship of Parents' Perceptions of Their Health and Communication with Their Young Children about Food
Author: Alexandra Malia Timpson Jackson
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

The promotion and adoption of healthy behaviors in children are critical. Parents play an important role in the development of these behaviors, wanting their children to adopt healthy behaviors, yet struggling to do so. The impact of communication about food and nutrition on the development of healthy behaviors in young children is relatively unknown. Additionally, as communication is bidirectional, it is important to understand how factors within the parent, including their perceived health and body image dissatisfaction, may influence communication about food and nutrition within the parent-child dyad.

Longitudinal Associations Between Home Food Environment and Diet Quality in Children

Longitudinal Associations Between Home Food Environment and Diet Quality in Children
Author: Jonae B. Perez
Publisher:
Total Pages: 28
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

Child and adolescent diets in the United States are high in fat and sodium and low in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and dairy foods. Parental practices and foods provided in the home greatly influence children's food related behaviors. This impact may change as children progress through adolescence and other factors begin to play a role, such as peers, media, and convenience of food. This study aimed to investigate longitudinal relationships between parenting around food/eating, foods available in the home, and future child diet quality in younger versus older children. The National Impact on Kids (NIK) Study was a prospective cohort study with two time points, baseline and 2-year follow-up. Parental surveys were used to collect data on home food environment and 24-hour food recalls were used to collect child dietary intake. Child diet quality indicators include DASH score, fruit and vegetable intake, and high-energy beverage intake. In this secondary data analysis, participants were dichotomized in to two groups: younger (ages 6-8.99) versus older (ages 9-12.5) at study initiation. Hierarchical linear regression models were used to assess the association between initial parenting around food/eating and foods available in the home and future child diet quality indicators. Participants were 50.7% female and predominantly Non-Hispanic White (70.2%). A significant overall change in DASH scores (p=.053), total fruit and vegetable intake (p=.017), and high-energy beverage consumption (p