Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Children--Nutrition--Psychological aspects; Food preferences;

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of race and socio-economic status on children's food preferences. Twenty-four obese and 43 non-obese young children (mean age 5.3 years) looked at an array of pictures of food and selected the pictures of items with which he/she would like to make a lunch. The mothers of the children were escorted into the room after the children had left the room and were instructed to modify, if they wish, their child's food selections. The mothers were also told that the modification of their child's selections should reflect a lunch they would normally serve their child. The children's and their mothers' food selections were analyzed by means of 2 (socio-economic status: low versus high) x 2 (race: African-American versus Caucasian-American) x 2 (food selector: child versus mother) analysis of variance. The significant findings were: (a) young children (ages 4-7) make poorer food selections than their mothers; (b) while mothers generally try to eliminate some of the poor food choices made by children, mothers often do not offer nutritious alternatives; (c) mothers modify their children's food selections regardless of whether the child is obese or not obese; (d) socio-economic status has no effect on children's food preferences and individuals of high or low SES do not differ in the degree to which they are nutrition conscious; (e) African-Americans, in general, make poor food preference selections than their Caucasian-American counterparts. The implications of these results for future intervention efforts are discussed.

Year of Submission

1991

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Psychology

First Advisor

Frank X. Barrios

Second Advisor

Jane L. Wong

Third Advisor

Augustine S. Osman

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

1991

Object Description

1 PDF file (106 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Included in

Psychology Commons

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