2.5 Factors that influence students’ food consumption patterns
2.5.4 Socio-cultural influences
2.5.4.1 Culture
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way to constitute a useful level of awareness among students of the appropriate dietary patterns (Vygotsky, 1978:48).
This study has, as one of its interest, an interrogation of college students in order to understand much about their food composition, healthful eating, and relationship between diet and health in order to target areas that need nutrition education intervention.
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people‟s choice of food, but also the entrenched traditional preferences of food and drink.
Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat (Kim et al., 2003:12). Each culture holds some food preferences and some food taboos hence it shapes food consumption patterns for its followers. Cultural influences lead to the difference in the habitual consumption of certain foods and in traditions of preparation, and in certain cases can lead to restrictions such as exclusion of meat and milk from the diet. Cultural influences are, however, amenable to change, and when moving to a new country or location, individuals often adopt particular food habits of the local culture.
Dietary habits and choices play a significant role in maintaining health and mortality, and can also define cultures and play a role in religious circles (Janssen et al., 2005:123). It is therefore, the idea of a healthy diet to provide all of the calories and nutrients needed by the body for optimal performance, and at the same time ensuring that neither nutritional deficiencies nor excesses occur. Evidence shows that in most African countries people have so wide a range of food choices determined by different cultural groups‟ preferences that it may be difficult to prescribe well- patterned diets on a particular institution (Huang et al., 2003:52). Pertaining to economic circumstances, (Janssen et al., 2005:126) observe that in most Third World countries, poor people may have to take any food available to them on the basis of affordability, despite its nutritional value. Conversely, students in many Zimbabwean institutions have had to make do with any food availed to them, owing to their financial limitations (Chikomba, 1986:122).
This observation seems to suggest that regardless of how much money a person may have, choice of food may be explained in terms of yet more complex factors beyond culture and the economic variables. In as far as dietary patterns of college students are concerned, it can be argued that the interplay of the social cultural and economic factors poses some complication in explaining what and how students eat, both inside and outside residence. However, the kind of food and drink people consume in a given community can be characterised as part of the material culture of a particular cultural community, researchers do not seem to realise the link that exists
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between people‟s choice and adoption of dietary patterns and their whole way of life (Pearlin, 1989:30).
According to the cultural needs achievement theory postulated by Vygotsky (1978), it can be argued that people‟s choices of what to eat and drink or what not to eat and drink is contingent upon the norms, values, belief practices and attitudes of their cultural community. For example in the African culture, it is taboo to eat dog meat, while in China, it is normal practice. Similarly, in the Indian culture, it is forbidden for the members of the Hindu ethnic group to eat beef as their cultural-religious beliefs forbid that. It is, therefore, on the basis of what society sanctions as food worth consuming among its members that people may be provided with particular types of diets regardless of the degree of the nutritional value of these diets.
According to (Willis, 1994:38; Worthington-Roberts & Williams, 2000:325), it is against the background of what people, as a distinct cultural group collectively define as food that people access and consume certain types of food. Furthermore, these cultural definitions seem to be consistent with the social status of the members of a particular society. In the African culture for example, it is prestigious for the chiefs or political leaders to eat (pangolin) meat which is in no way accessible to the general populace. This means that within the confines of this culture, the belief that runs is that pangolin meat is a preserve of the powerful and the wealthy. Hence, it can be inferred that the choice and access of a particular diet is a socially constructed phenomenon. Cultural definitions on the perceived food worth taking seem to regulate people‟s dietary patterns. When such socially-constructed perceptions ignore the intrinsic value of the foods people eat in terms of nutritional value, there appears to be a situation whereby certain people can be deprived of foods that may be important to the proper functioning of their bodies and minds. In the context of this study, the students make choices of certain foods within the context spaces that define diets. Granted the dynamism that characterises culture, the rigid beliefs some people hold can be outgrown by accepting the fact that the world is in a constant state of flux, implying that perceptions about food choices can be altered.
38 2.5.4.2 Family factors
Since parents provide food for their household, they have a huge influence on their child's diet and eating habits. If parents stock the pantry with chips, cookies, candy and sugary sweets, children become accustomed to these foods. However, if the refrigerator is stocked with fresh fruits, vegetables and healthy foods, children get used to these foods instead. It should, however, be kept in mind that a parent's eating habits also influence their child's diet. A parent cannot simply feed healthy foods to her daughter and then eat unhealthy foods in front of her. Over time, the child may begin to demand or request the foods the parents eat.
The family is widely recognised as being significant in food decisions. Research shows the shaping of food choices takes place in the home (Luthar, Latendresse, 2005:17). Since family and friends can be a source of encouragement in making and sustaining dietary change, adopting dietary strategies which are acceptable to them may benefit the individual whilst also having an effect on the eating habits of others (Anderson et al., 1998:69).