Preventing Childhood Obesity - Evidence Policy and Practice.pdf

CHAPTER 8
Evidence of the i nfl uence of h ome and
f amily e nvironment
Johannes Brug 1 , Saskia te Velde 1 , Ilse De Bourdeaudhuij 2 and Stef Kremers 3
1 EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
2 Department of Movement Sciences and Sport Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
3 Department of Health Promotion, NUTRIM School for Nutrition, Toxicology and
Metabolism, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Summary and recommendations
for practice
This chapter explores the influences of the physical,
social - cultural and economic environment on
children ’ s eating behavior and physical activity.
Socialization refers to the process by which a child
learns the appropriate behaviors and ways to act in
accordance with the cultural and/or societal norms.
During childhood, parents are the main socializing
agent and can have the biggest influence on their children
’ s food consumption and physical activities. This
is where life - long behaviors, habits and routines are
learnt. This chapter explores the current research not
only on parenting practices and energy - balance
behaviors but also the wider determinates such as the
environment and economic factors.
We use the ANGELO categories of obesogenic environments
1 to describe evidence on home and family
environmental influences on energy - balance behaviors
among young people. The home and family are
regarded as strong influences on determining children
’s and adolescents ’ micro-level social, political,
physical, as well as economical nutrition environments,
and physical activity environments. We summarize
the evidence from recent reviews and original
studies which regard the home and family environment
as important determinants for healthy eating
and physical activities.
Preventing Childhood Obesity. Edited by
E. Waters, B.A. Swinburn, J.C. Seidell and R. Uauy.
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing.
Introduction
In reviewing the evidence base, we used recent systematic
reviews that have addressed this topic area. 2 – 5 The
review by Ventura and Birch, comprising 66 articles
on associations between parental influences and child
eating variables, showed that there is substantial evidence
that parenting practices are important. 4 Reviews
by Van der Horst et al and Ferreira et al further show
that home and family environments are important
correlates of nutrition and physical activity behaviors
among children and adoloscents. 3,5 However, all three
reviews conclude that most of the available evidence
is based on cross - sectional studies.
The physical home environment determines what
is available in terms of food and opportunities for
physical activity, the socio - cultural environment
determines what is acceptable, and the economic environment
what is affordable. Since the home and
family micro - political environment cannot really be
distinguished from the socio - cultural family environment,
we focus here on the physical, socio - cultural
and economic environments.
The p hysical e nvironment
The home is where children spend much of their time,
especially at a young age, and it is the place where
children and adolescents eat the majority of their
meals. The home environment strongly defines what
foods and physical activity opportunities are available,
especially for younger children.
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