Classifying foods in contexts: How adults categorize foods for different eating settings

This project examined adults\u27 food cognitions by applying schema theory to explain how adults categorized foods for different contexts. Qualitative interviews and repeated card sort activities for different eating contexts were conducted to elicit as many food categories as possible form 42 US adults. Participants labeled card sort piles with their own words, providing 991 card sort labels. Qualitative analysis of the labels resulted in the emergence of 12 category types. Personal-experience-based types were specific to the individual (e.g., Preference). Context-based types were related to situational aspects of eating episodes (e.g., Location). Food-based types were related to intrinsic properties of the foods (e.g., Physical characteristics). Different combinations of the 12 category types were used for different eating contexts. Personal-experience and context-based types were used most frequently overall. Some category types were used more frequently for specific contexts (e.g., Convenience for work contexts). Food-based taxonomic category types were used most frequently when no context was defined. Script-oriented categories were more often used in response to specific eating contexts. These findings provide a framework to consider how individuals classify foods in real-life eating contexts. Attention to personal-experience and context-based category types may help improve understanding of relationships between knowledge and food choice behaviors

Employed parents\u27 satisfaction with food choice coping strategies: Influence of gender and structure

This study aimed to understand parents\u27 evaluations of the way they integrated work-family demands to manage food and eating. Employed, low/moderate-income, urban, U.S., Black, White, and Latino mothers (35) and fathers (34) participated in qualitative interviews exploring work and family conditions and spillover, food roles, and food-choice coping and family-adaptive strategies. Parents expressed a range of evaluations from overall satisfaction to overall dissatisfaction as well as dissatisfaction limited to work, family life, or daily schedule. Evaluation criteria differed by gender. Mothers evaluated satisfaction on their ability to balance work and family demands through flexible home and work conditions, while striving to provide healthy meals for their families. Fathers evaluated satisfaction on their ability to achieve schedule stability and participate in family meals, while meeting expectations to contribute to food preparation. Household, and especially work structural conditions, often served as sizeable barriers to parents fulfilling valued family food roles. These relationships highlight the critical need to consider the intersecting influences of gender and social structure as influences on adults\u27 food choices and dietary intake and to address the challenges of work and family integration among low income employed parents as a way to promote family nutrition in a vulnerable population

Behavioral Contexts, Food-Choice Coping Strategies, and Dietary Quality of a Multiethnic Sample of Employed Parents

Employed parents\u27 work and family conditions provide behavioral contexts for their food choices. Relationships between employed parents\u27 food-choice coping strategies, behavioral contexts, and dietary quality were evaluated. Data on work and family conditions, sociodemographic characteristics, eating behavior, and dietary intake from two 24-hour dietary recalls were collected in a random sample cross-sectional pilot telephone survey in the fall of 2006. Black, white, and Latino employed mothers (n=25) and fathers (n=25) were recruited from a low/moderate income urban area in upstate New York. Hierarchical cluster analysis (Ward\u27s method) identified three clusters of parents differing in use of food-choice coping strategies (ie, Individualized Eating, Missing Meals, and Home Cooking). Cluster sociodemographic, work, and family characteristics were compared using χ2 and Fisher\u27s exact tests. Cluster differences in dietary quality (Healthy Eating Index 2005) were analyzed using analysis of variance. Clusters differed significantly (P≤0.05) on food-choice coping strategies, dietary quality, and behavioral contexts (ie, work schedule, marital status, partner\u27s employment, and number of children). Individualized Eating and Missing Meals clusters were characterized by nonstandard work hours, grabbing quick food instead of a meal, using convenience entrées at home, and missing meals or individualized eating. The Home Cooking cluster included considerably more married fathers with nonemployed spouses and more home-cooked family meals. Food-choice coping strategies affecting dietary quality reflect parents\u27 work and family conditions. Nutritional guidance and family policy needs to consider these important behavioral contexts for family nutrition health

Eating routines: Embedded, value based, modifiable, and reflective

Eating routines are a compelling issue because recurring eating behaviors influence nutrition and health. As non-traditional and individualized eating patterns have become more common, new ways of thinking about routine eating practices are needed. This study sought to gain conceptual understanding of working adults\u27 eating routines. Forty-two purposively sampled US adults reported food intake and contextual details about eating episodes in qualitative 24-h dietary recalls conducted over 7 consecutive days. Using the constant comparative method, researchers analyzed interview transcripts for recurrent ways of eating that were either explicitly reported by study participants as routines or emergent in the data. Participants\u27 eating routines included repetition in food consumption as well as eating context, and also involved sequences of eating episodes. Eating routines were embedded in daily schedules for work, family, and recreation. Participants maintained purposeful routines that helped balance tension between demands and values, but they modified routines as circumstances changed. Participants monitored and reflected upon their eating practices and tended to assess their practices in light of their personal identities. These findings provide conceptual insights for food choice researchers and present a perspective from which practitioners who work with individuals seeking to adopt healthful eating practices might usefully approach their tasks

Sandwiching it in: spillover of work onto food choices and family roles in low- and moderate-income urban households

Lower status jobs, high workloads and lack of control at work have been associated with less healthful diets, but the ways through which work is connected to food choices are not well understood. This analysis was an examination of workers' experience of the relationship of their jobs to their food choices. Fifty-one multi-ethnic, urban, low- and moderate-income adults living in Upstate New York in 1995 participated in a qualitative interview study of fruit and vegetable choices and discussed employment and food choices. The workers who participated in this study described a dynamic relationship between work and food choices that they experienced in the context of their other roles and values. These workers presented a relationship that was characterized by positive and negative spillover between their jobs and their ability to fulfill family roles and promote personal health, linked by a spectrum of food choice strategies. Participants' narratives fit into three different domains: characterizations of work and their resources for food choice, strategies used to manage food choices within the constraints of work, and affect related to the negative and positive spillover of these strategies on family roles and on personal food choices. Characterizations of work as demanding and limiting or demanding and manageable differentiated participants who experienced their food choice strategies as a source of guilt and dissatisfaction (negative spillover) from those who experienced food choices as a source of pride and satisfaction (positive spillover). Ideals and values related to food choice and health were balanced against other values for family closeness and nurturing and personal achievement. Some participants found work unproblematic. These findings direct attention to a broad conceptualization of the relationship of work to food choices in which the demands and resources of the work role are viewed as they spill over into the social and temporal context of other roles and values.Food choice Work Employment roles Family roles United States

"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.Work-family Food choice Low wage Parents US