Ethnicity and Diet of Children: Development of Culturally Sensitive Measures

¹ Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
² Measurement and Research, College of Education, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
³ CNMI Public School System--Science, Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.
⁴ Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.
⁵ Department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology, College of Education, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mozhdeh.bruss{at}wmich.edu.

	Abstract

Obesity is a growing global concern. Examining dietary habits of individuals can facilitate the development of important prevention approaches, which are needed to decrease the incidence of obesity and other related diseases and improve quality of life indices. Because food preferences and dietary habits vary across cultures, it is essential that prevention programs are based on specific populations. Using both ethnographic and quantitative methods, food-consumption patterns were investigated among 1,125 children in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Differences were observed related to food frequency, age of children, and grade level. Exploratory factor analyses suggested that the individual foods were best organized into food-consumption groups that reflected cultural characteristics rather than more commonly referenced food organizational systems. In addition to developmental differences in food consumption patterns, results suggest that the ethnicity of parents may play a role in the diet of children.

Key Words: ethnicity, diet, culture

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?