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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 a.j.hill@leeds.ac.uk
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Abstract

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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

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