Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T02:07:45.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Developmental issues in attitudes to food and diet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2009

Andrew J. Hill
Andrew J. Hill*
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Psychiatry & Behavioural Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Leeds, 15 Hyde Terrace, Leeds LS2 9LT, UK
*
Dr Andrew Hill, fax +44 113 2433719, email [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

As a rule, children and most adults eat what they like and leave the rest. They like and consume foods high in fat and sugar. Parental behaviour shapes food acceptance, and early exposure to fruit and vegetables or to foods high in energy, sugar and fat is related to children's liking for, and consumption of, these foods. Some parents are imposing child-feeding practices that control what and how much children eat. However, over-control can be counter-productive, teaching children to dislike the very foods we want them to consume, and generally undermining self-regulation abilities. The external environment is also important, with concerns expressed about food advertising to children and girls dieting for an ideal thin body shape. Up to one-quarter of young adolescent girls report dieting to lose weight, their motivation driven by weight and shape dissatisfaction. For some, dieting and vegetarianism are intertwined and both legitimised as healthy eating. For others, striving for nutritional autonomy, the choice of less-healthy foods is not just because of their taste, but an act of parental defiance and peer solidarity. The determinants of what children choose to eat are complex, and the balance changes as children get older. A better understanding is crucial to informing how we might modify nutritional behaviour. Adults occupy a central position in this process, suggesting that children should be neither the only focus of nutritional interventions nor expected to solve the nutritional problems with which adults around them are continuing to fail.

Type
Nutrition and Behaviour Group Symposium on ‘Evolving attitudes to food and nutrition’
Information
Proceedings of the Nutrition Society , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , May 2002 , pp. 259 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © The Nutrition Society 2002

References

Barcus, FE (1980) The nature of television advertising to children.In Children and the Faces of Television: Teaching, Violence, Selling, pp. 273–285 [Palmer, EL and Dorr, A, editors]. Lexington, KY: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Berndt, TJ & Hestenes, SL(1996) The developmental course of social support: Family and peers. In The Developmental Psychopathology of Eating Disorders, pp. 77–106 [ Smolak, L, Levine, MP and Striegel-Moore, R, editors]. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Birch, LL (1980) Effects of peer models' food choices and eating behaviours on preschoolers' food preferences. Child Development 51, 489–496.Google Scholar
Birch, LL (1999) Development of food preferences. Annual Review of Nutrition 19, 41–626.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birch, LL & Fisher, JO (1998) Development of eating behaviours among children and adolescents. Pediatrics 101, 539–549.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birch, LL & Marlin, DW (1982) I don't like it; I never tried it: Effects of exposure to food on two-year old children's food preferences. Appetite 4, 353–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, LL, Marlin, DW & Rotter, J (1984) Eating as the ‘means’ activity in a contingency: Effects on young children's food preferences. Child Development 55, 432–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, LL, Zimmerman, S & Hind, H (1980) The influence of social-affective context on the formation of pre-school children's food preferences. Child Development 51, 856–861.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brugman, E, Meulmeester, JF, Spee-van der Wekke, A, Beuker, RJ, Zaadstra, BM Radder, JJ & Verloove-Vanhorik, PS (1997) Dieting, weight and health in adolescents in the Netherlands. International Journal of Obesity 21, 54–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, G & Maclean, H (1993) ‘Junk food’ and ‘healthy food’: Meanings of food in adolescent women's culture. Journal of Nutrition Education 25, 108–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chinn, S & Rona, RJ (2001) Prevalence and trends of overweight and obesity in three cross sectional studies of British children, 1974–1994 British Medical Journal 25, 24–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Contento, IR, Michela, JL & Williams, SS (1995) Adolescent food choice criteria: Role of weight and dieting status. Appetite 25, 51–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Bourdeaudhuij, I (1997) Family food rules and healthy eating in adolescents. Journal of Health Psychology 2, 45–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Department of Health (2001) The balance of good health. http://www.galaxy-h.gov.uk/balance-of-good-health.htmlGoogle Scholar
Dibb, S & Castell, A (1995) Easy to Swallow, Hard to Stomach: The Results of a Survey of Food Advertising on Television. London: The National Food Alliance.Google Scholar
Dickinson, R (1997) Television and Food Choice. London: Food Standards Agency.Google Scholar
Domel, SB, Baranowski, T, Davis, H, Leonard, SB, Riley, P & Baranowski, J (1993) Measuring fruit and vegetable preferences among 4th and 5th grade students. Preventive Medicine 22, 866–879.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feunekes, GIJ, de Graaf, C, Meyboom, RD & van Staveren, WA (1998) Food choice and fat intake of adolescents and adults: Associations of intakes within social networks. Preventive Medicine 27, 645–656.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fisher, LA & Birch, LL (1995) 3—5 year-old children's fat preferences and fat consumption are related to parental obesity. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 95, 758–764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
French, SA, Perry, CL, Leon, GR & Fulkerson, JA (1995) Dieting behaviours and weight change history in female adolescents. Health Psychology 14, 548–555.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Furnham, A (2000) Children and Advertising. The Allegations and the Evidence London: Social Affairs Unit.Google Scholar
Gilbody, SM, Kirk, SFL & Hill, AJ (1999) Vegetarianism in young women: Another means of weight control?. International Journal of Eating Disorders 26, 87–90.3.0.CO;2-M>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gregory, J, Lowe, S, Bates, CJ, Prentice, A, Jackson, LV, Smithers, G, Wenlock, R & Farron, M (2000) National Diet and Nutritional Survey: Young People aged 4—18 years, vol. 1. Report of the Diet and Nutrition Survey London: The Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Grogan, S (1999) Body image. Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women and Children. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hammond, KM Wyllie, A & Casswell, S (1999) The extent and nature of televised food advertising to New Zealand children and adolescents. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 23, 49–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hearn, MD Baranowski, T Baranowski, J Doyle, C Smith, M Lin, LS & Resnicow, K (1998) Environmental influences on dietary behaviour among children: Availability and accessibility of fruit and vegetables enable consumption. Journal of Health Education 29, 26–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendy, HM & Raudenbush, B (2000) Effectiveness of teacher modelling to encourage food acceptance in pre-school children. Appetite 34, 61–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, AJ (2000 a) Body dissatisfaction and dieting in children. In Feeding Problems and Eating Disorders in Children and Adolescents. [Cooper, PJ and Stein, A, editors]. Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers (In the Press).Google Scholar
Hill, AJ (2000 b) Prevalence and demographics of dieting. In Eating Disorders and Obesity: A Comprehensive Handbook, 2nd ed., pp. 80–83. [Fairburn, CG and Brownell, KD, editors]. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Hill, AJ Draper, E & Stack, J (1994) A weight on children’s minds: Body shape dissatisfactions at 9–years old. International Journal of Obesity 18, 383–389.Google ScholarPubMed
Johnston, C (2001) Commercialism in classrooms. Pediatrics 107, e44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koivisto, Hursti UK (1999) Factors influencing children’s food choice. Annals of Medicine 31, Suppl. 1, 26–32.Google Scholar
Lewis, MK & Hill, AJ (1998) Food advertising on British children's television: A content analysis and experimental study with nine-year olds. International Journal of Obesity 22, 206–214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lupton, D (1996) Food, the Body and the Self. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Marketing (2001) Biggest brands 2000 — growth of top brands by sector. http://www.marketing.haynet.com/featureOO/bigbrands00/sectgrow.htm.Google Scholar
Martins, Y Pliner, P&O’ Connor, R (1999) Restrained eating among vegetarians: Does a vegetarian eating style mask concerns about weight Appetite 32, 145–154.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muir, SL Wertheim, EH & Paxton, SJ (1999) Adolescent girls& first diets: Triggers and the role of multiple dimensions of self-concept. Eating Disorders 7, 259–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neumark-Sztainer, D Story, M Resnick, MD & Blum, RW (1997) Adolescent vegetarians. A behavioural profile of a school-based population in Minnesota. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 151, 833–838.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pliner, P & Stallberg-White, C (2000) ‘Pass the ketchup please’: Familiar flavours increase children’s willingness to taste novel foods. Appetite 34, 95–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Postman, N (1994) The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Putnam R (1996) Who killed civic America? Prospect March issue, 66–72.Google Scholar
Rajecki, DW McTavish, DG Rasmussen, JL Schreuders, M Byers, DC & Jessup, KS (1994) Violence, conflict, trickery, and other story themes in TV ads for food for children. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 24, 1685–1700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, SJ McGuiness, PJ Bilton, RF & Maxwell, SM (1999) Dieting behaviour among 11–15–year olds in Merseyside and the Northwest of England. Journal of Adolescent Health 25, 62–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, S (2000) Children’s perceptions of who controls ther food. ofJournal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 13, 163–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudolf, MCJ Sahota, P Barth, J & Walker, J (2001) Increasing prevalence of obesity in primary school children: Cohort study. British Medical Journal 322, 1094–1095.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Story, M Neumark-Sztainer, D Sherwood, N Stang, J & Murray, D (1998) Dieting status and its relationship to eating and physical activity behaviours in a representative sample of US adolescents. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 98, 1127–1135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sustain (2001) TV Dinners. What’s Being Served Up by the Advertisers London: Sustain.Google Scholar
Taras, HL & Gage, M (1995) Advertised foods on children’s television. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 149, 649–652.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Villani, S (2001) Impact of media on children and adolescents: A 10–year review of the research. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 40, 392–401.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wardle, J & Marsland, L (1990) Adolescent concerns about weight and eating: A social-developmental perspective. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 34, 377–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, B Webley, P Hetherington, M & Zeedyk, S (1997) The Role of Television Advertising on Children’s Food Choice. London: Food Standards Agency.Google Scholar
Young, BM (1990) Television Advertising and Children. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar