Family Income and Healthy Diets, More To It Than You Think
Food expenditure is what you can cut back on and still have shelter and a way to get to work. Money is often saved for rent or utility bills, but not for food. As a consequence, when shopping on a restricted budget, costlier fruits and vegetables may get passed over. Instead, the shopper may favor less healthy, but more calorie-dense foods. One could argue that if this is the case, then diets should become healthier if income increases (and vice versa). Instead of arguing, academics should make a study of it with an experiment. One group from Australia* did just that. And, as it so often turns out in real life, it’s more complicated then that.
Methods:
The study involved asking high and low-income women to select items off a list of food items (over 500) as though they were grocery shopping with their regular budget. Then, researchers asked what ten items they would add if they had 25% more to spend. Following this, the participants had to remove as many as ten items from their original list as if they had a budget 25% smaller. Items the women selected were placed into three categories- healthy, moderately healthy, and unhealthy. The researchers were essentially trying to “equalize” the budgets of the women by looking at what high-income women do with 25% less compared with what low-income women do with 25% more.
Results:
The results demonstrated that “equalizing” the budgets of women did not eliminate income differences when it comes to the choosing healthy foods. Although, some more healthier items were chosen, even with a greater budget low-income women still chose a greater proportion from the less healthy food choices. And women with a higher-income still chose a greater number of foods when on a reduced budget.
Analysis:
When it comes to buying healthier foodstuffs, there is something more at play at just income levels. The different shopping patterns may be because of residual behavior tendencies or different family preferences. The two groups did not equalize as the researchers hypothesized possibly because low-income woman realized that they would still have less time to shop for or prepare healthier foods.
2 Problems:
1)The food categories seem arbitrary.
Tofu and hummus are in “moderately healthy” category along with beef, sausages, and pork (bacon and hamburgers are in the unhealthy category). Even unsalted nuts are seen as only “moderately healthy”. This is especially odd since a depiction of the Healthy Eating Pyramid suggests that nuts are part of the “eat most” (i.e. the healthy foods) category. In general, the group’s interpretation of the Healthy Eating Pyramid is rather suspect.
Australian Healthy Eating Pyramid
2) The quantifying process of food items over-generalized.
Regardless of how many of one thing a woman bought it would be counted as one item (6 apples would be just one unit of apples). This is a problem when considering that women on budget restrictions may choose to purchase fewer of something rather than eliminate the item altogether. So, when it came to comparing the woman’s purchases on her regular budget to her restricted budget, it may appear as though she is still buying the same amount of healthy foods, when clearly this is not the case.
The subtleties are important when it comes to our health, for eating healthier is not an either/or situation. Purchasing 3 apples instead of 6 makes a difference, as does 5 versus 1. All of which would be counted as one unit of apples in the data of the study. Since the obvious trends are still there, I cannot fault the study too much on this account. In the future, studies should take into consideration the difference between purchasing something and purchasing less of that same thing.
Further Directions:
Despite the issues I had with the study, it still shows that eating healthy is more complicated than one may think. The study teaches us where we could be focusing our efforts when trying to get people to eat better. The government and non-profits alike should make educational materials that focus more on cost-effective, economical ways of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. But, as the study suggests, money is not the only issue when it comes to making healthy meals. The researchers advise that we encourage farmers markets to prosper, have longer hours, or even deliver so that people with time constraints can still have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. In the end, we see that we still have a lot to learn when it comes to helping people of all incomes eat better.
*Inglis,V.; Ball, K.; Crawford, D. (2009) Does modifying the household food budget predict changes in the healthfulness of purchasing choices among low- and high-income women? Â Appetite 52, 272-279
March 23, 2009
Tags: education, food, Health, moms, nutrition Posted in: Health, Science & Technology
3 Responses
Mathematically Finding The Biggest Nutritional Bang For Your Buck | Food Bubbles - May 20, 2009
[...] have shown once again that when it comes to cost cutting, diets inevitably suffer. Researchers from University of [...]
i think that we should focus more on healthy eating to avoid diabetes and cardiovascular diseases
healthy eating should be our top priority since there are many junk foods and foods with no nutritional value these days
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