Exploring the World of Food - The Perspective of Families With Children

• Project start date: 1 October 2019
• Project status: Completed
• Project type: Food safety
• Discipline: Nutrition
• Principal researcher/s: Dr Colette Kelly, NUIG
• Collaborator/s: Dr Harrington, University College Cork, Prof Woodside, Queen's University Belfast, Dr McKinley, Queen's University Belfast

Research objective

• To explore the “micro-environmental”, or local and family, contexts in which low-income families with children make decisions about the food they buy, prepare and eat. 
• To explore the differences in these contexts between families with children at different developmental stages. 
• To identify the major food decision points (that is, meals and snacks), the settings in which they occur, and the context “trigger points” that influence decisions, according to the type of family composition. 
• To explore strategies used by each type of family to navigate and make food decisions within their food environment. 
• To make recommendations on potential strategies to enable parents to prepare meals and snacks that constitute a healthy diet for their families.

Outputs

Research report

• Title: Exploring the world of food
• Publication date: 5 April 2022
• Summary: Many factors influence decisions about meals and snacks that are eaten at home.
• Findings:
  • Parents sought to nourish their children and provide the best food possible. Parents’ choices were routinely guided by children’s preferences, perceived specific dietary requirements and perceived needs. This has implications for the design of dietary guidance and advice for families with children at different developmental stages. Specifically, parents would benefit from guidance on 5 strategies to work around children’s food phobias, such as irrational fears or dislikes of certain foods, and include more fruit and vegetables in their diets.
  • Time was identified as a resource in short supply for many families with children, particularly one-parent families. This has implications for the development of resources for families, which should consider time constraints on families, as well as budget, level of skill and knowledge of food preparation.
  • The availability of free school meals frees up budgets for parents on very low incomes, such that more of the family food budget may be used to buy healthier and fresh foods for meals consumed at home. This has implications for national-level policy and for the implementation of free school meals, which should be considered as means of improving the health and wellbeing of children and families across the island of Ireland.
  • It should be noted that parents on very low incomes are frequently severely limited in making their food choices and can experience a sense of stigma and guilt in requiring food assistance. The implementation of free school meals as a universal policy rather than a benefit targeted at low-income or disadvantaged areas would significantly help these families improve their diets and would help to reduce the perceived stigma associated with needing help.
  • The corporate environment – especially supermarket chains – plays a particularly important role in influencing food choices, with the availability of store offers, special deals and vouchers significantly driving food buying behaviours. Other factors, such as the marketing of food products, store architecture (the layout, lighting, product placement and so on), level of food knowledge and budget available, will further influence the decisions made once parents are inside the shop. This highlights the need to provide messaging to parents on how to navigate the commercial food environment with both health and budget in mind.
  • Participants made clear the value of eating together as a family, with food viewed not just as fuel for living but also as something to be shared with and among friends and family as a social event. This has implications for the framing of messages around the value of eating well and for eating together as a family, which has proven health benefits for all the family. 
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant effect on altering patterns of food buying, food-related practices and consumption. Positive changes in practices included an increase in families eating together. Negative impacts included an increase in food insecurity and reliance on food assistance as families experienced a drop in income due to loss of employment. These findings have implications for research, which should be carried out to investigate the wider and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and consumer behaviours, dietary practices and food insecurity.

  You can download the report below.

Other outputs

Ravikumar, D., Spyreli, E., Woodside, J., McKinley, M. & Kelly, C. (2021). Parental perceptions of the food environment and their influence on food decisions among low- income families: a rapid review of qualitative evidence. BMC Public Health 22(1), 1-16.

Spyreli, E., Woodside, J., McKinley, M. & Kelly, C. (2021). A qualitative exploration of the impact of COVID-19 on food decisions of economically disadvantaged families in Northern Ireland. BMC Public Health 21 (1), 1-16.

Vaughan, E., Spyreli, E., McKinley, M., Hennessy, M., Woodside, J., & Kelly, C. (2024). Exploring the world of food with families: perspectives of low-income families on factors influencing their food choices. Public health nutrition, 27(1), e53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S136898002400020X

Kelly, C., Vaughan, E., Spyreli, E., McKinley, M., Woodside, J. (2022). Exploring the world of food: the perspectives of families with children. Online report launch, April 5th 2022.

Vaughan, E. Spyreli, E., Woodside, J., McKinley, M., & Kelly, C. (2022). Exploring the world of food with families: The impact of the corporate environment on family food choices. Presented [online] at the 24th IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion - Promoting policies for health, well-being and equity. Montreal, Canada.

Vaughan, E. & Kelly, C. (2022). Family food choices? Exploring the food-related practices of low-income families in the Republic of Ireland. Presented at the 26th Annual Health Promotion Conference: Health Inequity: Action for change, University of Galway, June 2022.

Video: Exploring the World of Food (External link to YouTube, opens in new window)

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