How children eat may contribute to rising levels of obesity children's eating behaviours: An intergenerational study of family influences

The term ‘obesogenic environment’ is rapidly becoming part of common phraseology. However, the influence of the family and the home environment on children's eating behaviours is little understood. Research that explores the impact of this micro environment and intergenerational influences affecting children's eating behaviours is long overdue. A qualitative, grounded theory approach, incorporating focus groups and semi-structured interviews, was used to investigate the family environment and specifically, the food culture of different generations within families. What emerged was a substantive theory based on ‘ordering of eating’ that explains differences in eating behaviours within and between families. Whereas at one time family eating was highly ordered and structured, typified by the grandparent generation, nowadays family eating behaviours are more haphazard and less ordered, evidenced by the way the current generation of children eat. Most importantly, in families with an obese child eating is less ordered compared with those families with a normal weight child. Ordering of eating' is a unique concept to emerge. It shows that an understanding of the eating process is crucial to the development and improvement of interventions targeted at addressing childhood obesity within the family context

Diorama

Diorama is the first piece in an ongoing series exploring what it means to re-present a journey occurring in real-time elsewhere. As part of Futuresonic2006, Karen Gaskill and Gary Peploe captured live footage from both sides of a barge moving up and down the Bridgewater Canal in Manchester, UK. After each journey was over, the recorded footage was played back as a parallel screen installation in a shipping container situated at the Museum of Science and Industry. The start point of the footage coordinated with the boats departure and arrival times, thus creating a mirror effect between the two venues. This action was repeated for each journey the boat made, offering the audience a virtual vantage point upon the moving barge, and exploring notions of virtuality, delay and observation