The role of schools
The school’s physical and social environment has an important influence in shaping young people’s eating patterns (Bauer, Yang et al. 2004, Contento IR, Koch PA et al. 2010) and broadening their taste preferences by encouraging them to try new foods (Jonsson M, Ekstrom MP et al. 2005, Worsley T and Crawford D 2005). As young people spend the majority of the day at school and consume the majority of their energy intake there (Story M, Neumark-Sztainer D et al. 2002, Bauer, Yang et al. 2004), it makes sense to target programs which promote healthy eating behaviours at school.
Developing practical food skills through structured lessons is one opportunity that can be provided in the school environment to promote healthy eating behaviours. However, skill-based healthy eating programs in schools have seldom been evaluated (Gussow and Contento 1984, Contento L, Balch G et al. 1995), even in more recent times (Wu M, Seeley A et al. 2008, Engler-Stringer R 2010, Vidgen H and Gallegos 2012). Therefore it’s difficult to ascertain the level of influence these programs might have on young people’s eating behaviours.
As part of my research of home economics teachers, I examined teacher’s perceptions of the importance of a variety of food skills they believed ought to be taught in the curriculum. The main assumption of my research was that teachers’ wanted to expose their students to a wide variety of foods through their food skills programs and to ensure that they enjoyed and consumed these foods as part of the daily social ritual of eating with their friends and family and to achieve their daily nutritional requirements. The aim of the research was to identify the food skills that teachers’ communicate to their students. The outcomes of this research found that teachers were keen for young people to be supported in their food decisions and encouraged to enjoy (healthy) food in a supportive and positive mealtime environment. For teachers, this meant that they needed to cultivate a positive environment where their students could sit down at table to eat and enjoy the food they made with their friends.
Eating for enjoyment: the Satter model
This concept of ‘enjoying food’ simply for its intrinsic value underpins the principles of the Satter model (Satter EM 2008), which postulates that young people can be encouraged to become ‘competent eaters’ through awareness of intuitive eating capabilities and exposure to a wide variety of foods, including ‘unhealthy’ food.
Eating Competence Model (Satter E 2007)
The Eating Competence Model focuses on the attributes of eating for enjoyment and fostering attitudes and competencies to enable individuals to manage their eating behaviours. It has four components: Eating Attitudes, Contextual Skills, Food Acceptance and Internal Regulation. The Eating Competence model is shown below (Figure 1). The model is applicable for use in educational settings and proposes that individuals have intuitive eating capabilities that can be utilised and developed in food education programs in schools.
Figure 1 Satter’s eating competence model: Eating attitudes, contextual skills, food acceptance, and internal regulation. (Satter E 2007)
The Eating Competence Model has a focus on fostering positive attitudes towards eating healthy food by providing individuals with the behavioural capabilities to be able to make tasty family meals. This directly aligns with the key rationale of my research. The model provides practical recommendations, based on the age and stage of learner, for teachers in schools and outlined below under the four interrelated components of the Eating Competence Model (Satter EM 2008).
The model proposes that Eating Attitudes (EA) focus on fostering flexible and positive attitudes toward eating and food itself. Eating attitudes are considered to reflect the individual’s attitudes and emotions, and the social and environmental determinants in which the individual interrelates and lives. For teachers in secondary schools, the model’s suggestions include building on young people’s understanding of their own attitudes and beliefs in guiding their food behaviours. Questions for consideration by teachers are suggested, including: What are social attitudes about food? What attitudes do your parents have about food and eating? How do their attitudes affect your own? Are you comfortable with those attitudes, or do you want to change them?
These questions relate to my research which was to identify the essential skills that young people need as individuals to be able to cook sustainably for themselves and others. The teacher’s role here is to help each student to clarify his/her own values and beliefs about food so that they align with their personalised concept of what constitutes healthy food choices and eating behaviours.
The Contextual Skills (CS) component of the model focuses on meal-planning skills and resources to enable individuals to create family meals. For teachers in secondary schools, it suggests teaching young people how to manage time as a limited resource to plan meals, shop for food and then cook simple meals. Suggested questions1 included: What, where, when and how of feeding.
These questions relate to my research which were to incorporate the essential skills into the food curriculum designed as relevant by the teacher.
The Food Acceptance (FA) component of the model focuses on maintaining nutritional status by developing the individual’s learned food preferences and by encouraging him/her to try new foods and eat and enjoy a variety of food (particularly nutritious food). For teachers in schools the model suggests permitting young people to express their individuality and make their own risk assessments when making food choices. Suggested questions[1] include: What are the consequences of eating ‘healthy’, ‘unhealthy’ food?
The fourth component of the model, Internal Regulation (IR), has a focus on training individuals to recognise physiological responses such as hunger, appetite and food satiety in order for them to achieve energy balance and manage their body weight. Internal Regulation considers the individual’s activity levels and body weight but strictly avoids prescriptive advice about managing weight and regulating food intake. For teachers in schools suggestions include young people becoming familiar with their own food-regulated strategies and evaluating and using those strategies. Suggested questions[2] include: How does it feel when I am hungry? When am I full? What do I believe I need to eat for my energy needs?
These same questions have been posed by Dr Rick Kausman as part of his hunger continuum and what he terms as ‘non-hungry’ eating.
More next week….
References
Fostering healthy eating in young people (of all ages)
The role of schools
The school’s physical and social environment has an important influence in shaping young people’s eating patterns (Bauer, Yang et al. 2004, Contento IR, Koch PA et al. 2010) and broadening their taste preferences by encouraging them to try new foods (Jonsson M, Ekstrom MP et al. 2005, Worsley T and Crawford D 2005). As young people spend the majority of the day at school and consume the majority of their energy intake there (Story M, Neumark-Sztainer D et al. 2002, Bauer, Yang et al. 2004), it makes sense to target programs which promote healthy eating behaviours at school.
Developing practical food skills through structured lessons is one opportunity that can be provided in the school environment to promote healthy eating behaviours. However, skill-based healthy eating programs in schools have seldom been evaluated (Gussow and Contento 1984, Contento L, Balch G et al. 1995), even in more recent times (Wu M, Seeley A et al. 2008, Engler-Stringer R 2010, Vidgen H and Gallegos 2012). Therefore it’s difficult to ascertain the level of influence these programs might have on young people’s eating behaviours.
As part of my research of home economics teachers, I examined teacher’s perceptions of the importance of a variety of food skills they believed ought to be taught in the curriculum. The main assumption of my research was that teachers’ wanted to expose their students to a wide variety of foods through their food skills programs and to ensure that they enjoyed and consumed these foods as part of the daily social ritual of eating with their friends and family and to achieve their daily nutritional requirements. The aim of the research was to identify the food skills that teachers’ communicate to their students. The outcomes of this research found that teachers were keen for young people to be supported in their food decisions and encouraged to enjoy (healthy) food in a supportive and positive mealtime environment. For teachers, this meant that they needed to cultivate a positive environment where their students could sit down at table to eat and enjoy the food they made with their friends.
Eating for enjoyment: the Satter model
This concept of ‘enjoying food’ simply for its intrinsic value underpins the principles of the Satter model (Satter EM 2008), which postulates that young people can be encouraged to become ‘competent eaters’ through awareness of intuitive eating capabilities and exposure to a wide variety of foods, including ‘unhealthy’ food.
Eating Competence Model (Satter E 2007)
The Eating Competence Model focuses on the attributes of eating for enjoyment and fostering attitudes and competencies to enable individuals to manage their eating behaviours. It has four components: Eating Attitudes, Contextual Skills, Food Acceptance and Internal Regulation. The Eating Competence model is shown below (Figure 1). The model is applicable for use in educational settings and proposes that individuals have intuitive eating capabilities that can be utilised and developed in food education programs in schools.
Figure 1 Satter’s eating competence model: Eating attitudes, contextual skills, food acceptance, and internal regulation. (Satter E 2007)
The Eating Competence Model has a focus on fostering positive attitudes towards eating healthy food by providing individuals with the behavioural capabilities to be able to make tasty family meals. This directly aligns with the key rationale of my research. The model provides practical recommendations, based on the age and stage of learner, for teachers in schools and outlined below under the four interrelated components of the Eating Competence Model (Satter EM 2008).
The model proposes that Eating Attitudes (EA) focus on fostering flexible and positive attitudes toward eating and food itself. Eating attitudes are considered to reflect the individual’s attitudes and emotions, and the social and environmental determinants in which the individual interrelates and lives. For teachers in secondary schools, the model’s suggestions include building on young people’s understanding of their own attitudes and beliefs in guiding their food behaviours. Questions for consideration by teachers are suggested, including: What are social attitudes about food? What attitudes do your parents have about food and eating? How do their attitudes affect your own? Are you comfortable with those attitudes, or do you want to change them?
These questions relate to my research which was to identify the essential skills that young people need as individuals to be able to cook sustainably for themselves and others. The teacher’s role here is to help each student to clarify his/her own values and beliefs about food so that they align with their personalised concept of what constitutes healthy food choices and eating behaviours.
The Contextual Skills (CS) component of the model focuses on meal-planning skills and resources to enable individuals to create family meals. For teachers in secondary schools, it suggests teaching young people how to manage time as a limited resource to plan meals, shop for food and then cook simple meals. Suggested questions1 included: What, where, when and how of feeding.
These questions relate to my research which were to incorporate the essential skills into the food curriculum designed as relevant by the teacher.
The Food Acceptance (FA) component of the model focuses on maintaining nutritional status by developing the individual’s learned food preferences and by encouraging him/her to try new foods and eat and enjoy a variety of food (particularly nutritious food). For teachers in schools the model suggests permitting young people to express their individuality and make their own risk assessments when making food choices. Suggested questions[1] include: What are the consequences of eating ‘healthy’, ‘unhealthy’ food?
The fourth component of the model, Internal Regulation (IR), has a focus on training individuals to recognise physiological responses such as hunger, appetite and food satiety in order for them to achieve energy balance and manage their body weight. Internal Regulation considers the individual’s activity levels and body weight but strictly avoids prescriptive advice about managing weight and regulating food intake. For teachers in schools suggestions include young people becoming familiar with their own food-regulated strategies and evaluating and using those strategies. Suggested questions[2] include: How does it feel when I am hungry? When am I full? What do I believe I need to eat for my energy needs?
These same questions have been posed by Dr Rick Kausman as part of his hunger continuum and what he terms as ‘non-hungry’ eating.
More next week….
References
Bauer, K., et al. (2004). “”How Can We Stay Healthy When You’re Throwing All of This in Front of Us?” Findings From Focus Groups and interviews in Middle Schools on Environmental Influences on Nutrition and Physical Activity.” Health Education Behaviour 31(1): 34-46.
Caraher M, et al. (2013). “When chefs adopt a school?: an evaluation of a cooking intevention in English primary schools.” Appetite 62: 50-59.
Children’s Food Trust (2013). “Let’s Get Cooking”. Retrieved from http://www.letsgetcooking.org.uk/ “.
Contento IR (2008). “Nutrition education: linking research, theory, and practice.” Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition 17(1): 176-179.
Contento IR, et al. (2010). “Adolescents Demonstrate Improvement in Obesity Risk Behaviours after Completion of Choice, Control and Change, a Curriculum Addressing Personal Agency and Autonomous Motivation.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 110: 1830-1839.
Contento IR, et al. (2002). “Review and analysis of evaluation measures used in nutrition education intervention research.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour 34(1): 2-25.
Contento L, et al. (1995). “The effectiveness of nutrition education and implications for nutrition education policy, programs and research: a review of research.” Journal of Nutrition Education 27: 284-418.
Engler-Stringer R (2010). “Food, Cooking Skills and Health: A Literature Review.” Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research 71(3): 141-145.
Gussow, J. and I. Contento (1984). “Nutrition Education in a Changing World.” Wld Rev. Nutr. Diet 44: 1-56.
Jonsson M, et al. (2005). “Appetising learning in Swedish comprehensive schools:an attempt to employ food and tasting in a new form of experimental education.” International Journal of Consumer Studies 29(1): 78-85.
Larson NI, et al. (2006). “Food Preparation and Purchasing Roles among Adolescents: Associations with Sociodemographic Characteristics and Diet Quality.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 106: 211-218.
Rocha Leal FM, et al. (2011). “Relationship between cooking habits and skills and Mediterranean diet in a sample of Portuguese adolescents.” Perspectives in Public Health 131(6): 283-287.
Satter E (2007). “Eating Competence: Nutrition Education with the Satter Eating Competence Model.” J Nutr Educ Behav 2007(39): S189-S194.
Satter E (2007). “Eating Competence:Definition and Evidence for the Satter Eating Competence Model.” Journal of Nutr Educ Behav. 39 (S142-S153).
Satter EM (2008). Nutrition Education in Schools (Appendix H). Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family. Madison, WI, Kelcy Press.
Story M, et al. (2002). “Individual and environmental influences on adolescent eating behaviours.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association S40,102(3).
Veuglers PJ and Fitzgerald AL (2005). “Effectiveness of school programs in preventing childhood obesity: a multilevel comparison.” Am J Public Health 95(3): 432-435.
Vidgen H and D. Gallegos (2012). Defining food literacy, its components, development and relationship to food intake: A case study of young people and disadvantage. Brisbane, Queensland, Queensland University of Technology.
Warash BG, et al. (2003). “Snack Choices: helping young children make decisions.” Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences 95(2): 60-64.
Worsley T and Crawford D (2005). Promoting Healthy Eating for Children- A Planning Guide for Practitioners. Melbourne, Victorian Government Department of Human Services.
Wu M, et al. (2008). A Movable Feast. London, Centre for Food Policy, City University: 1-25.
This blog content is an edited extract by the author Fordyce-Voorham, S, Food Skills in Secondary Schools (Thesis) University of Wollongong 2014.