Journal of nutrition education最新文献

Objective

The objective of this study was to discover and understand women's perceptions of stability and change in their orientations to food and nutrition during a time of physical, social, and psychological transitions.

Design

A 10-year follow-up to a 1988 study was conducted.

Participants/Settings

Seventeen women from a 1988 study in a semirural county in New York participated. They were well-educated, Caucasian mothers, aged 44 to 75 years in 1998.

Methods

Semistructured, qualitative interviews in 1988 and 1998 were analyzed using grounded theory analysis. The 1998 and 1988 interviews with the same women were compared to understand patterns in orientations to food and nutrition. The life-course perspective was a conceptual guide.

Results

Most women in this sample described consistent orientations to food and nutrition at interviews 10 years apart. Even in the face of expected and unexpected changes in healthy, social environment, and roles, 14 of the 17 women perceived that their thoughts, beliefs, and strategies related to food and nutrition had been consistent across 10 years. The few women who perceived that they had changed orientations attributed changes to debilitating disease and transitions in work and family roles.

Implications

Perceptions of consistency in their orientations to food and nutrition through midlife and older age among these women may be signs of stable trajectories that influence their response to nutrition education and their approach to dietary change.

The study objective was to quantify interpretations of the term “balanced meals” used in food security status assessments. Telephone interviews included 77 charitable food recipients in Hawai'i. After participants first responded to the question of whether they could afford to eat balanced meals, they next defined what a “balanced meal” meant. Qualitative responses were categorized into common themes. Forty-one (53%) indicated that a balanced meal consisted of at least three food groups. Thirty-one (40%) indicated something other than three food groups; five (6%) had no idea what a “balanced meal” meant. The findings question the validity and reliability of responses to “balanced meal” food security indicators in Hawai'i.

This report describes the evaluation of a preschool nutrition education program based on the theory of multiple intelligences. Forty-six nutrition educators provided a series of 12 lessons to 6102 preschool-age children. The program was evaluated using a pretest/post-test design to assess differences in fruit and vegetable identification, healthy snack choices, willingness to taste foods, and eating behaviors. Subjects showed significant improvement in food identification and recognition, healthy snack identification, willingness to taste foods, and frequency of fruit, vegetable, meat, and dairy consumption. The evaluation indicates that the program was an effective approach for educating preschool children about nutrition.

The purpose of this study was to determine sources and types of information about child feeding practices that were received by 62 mothers with children aged 2 to 54 months. Each mother participated in 10 or 11 in-home interviews. Data analyses included chi-square testing for differences in information sources over time and content analyses to develop information themes. As sources, citations for professionals and magazines decreased, with no significant changes for relatives over time. After 24 months, newspapers, television, and friends were reported more frequently than earlier. Mothers reported multiple and concurrent information sources over time. Thus, nutrition educators have concurrent and multiple opportunities to disseminate nutrition information.

Given senior citizens' vulnerability for foodborne illness, a need exists to determine the necessity and focus for education. Focus groups at senior centers reveal that the seniors (N=74) who prepare more than five meals a week at home use both inappropriate and appropriate practices to cook, cool, and thaw foods. Seniors rely on the distant past for knowledge and identify barriers to altering practices but state that information from educators about the health effects of inappropriate practices will convince them to change. For future food safety education, seniors recommend programs, videotapes, television, newspapers, radio, church bulletins, and written educational pieces.