A new book by a Dalhousie professor looks to answer why we make the choices we do when it comes to eating.
Dalhousie University professor Brenda Beagan teaches students about food, and the social aspects surrounding it.
Recently, Beagan noticed a lot of teaching material was either dated or from another part of the world.
“That gave students a lot of ammunition to say they didn't believe in what they were hearing,” says Beagan.
So Beagan collaborated with five other researchers from across the country to look at the way Canadians eat now, and how social factors affect their choices.
The findings were recently published in a book titled 'Acquired Tastes - Why Families Eat The Way They Do.'
“We did interviews with at least two members of each family in 105 families across Canada, at least one adult and one teenager,” says Beagan.
The participants all understood what it meant to eat healthy, but weren't necessarily doing it.
“So rather than assume they're stupid, they need more education, or they're just stubborn, we want to know why do they eat the way they do? What is going on when people decide what to eat and not eat?”
Beagan says gender proved to be one of the major social influences on food choices.
When participants were shown photos of different foods and asked to classify them as masculine or feminine, clear patterns emerged.
“Masculine foods were things like cheeseburger, macaroni and cheese, pizza, wings, anything that was considered unhealthy or childlike was also seen as masculine,” says Beagan.
Any hearty foods or meats were also classified as masculine by participants.
On the other hand, women’s foods were seen as lighter, or weight conscious.
“Anything with fish, salads for sure, soups, those kinds of things were seen as women's foods.”
Beagan says these attitudes can pose challenges for males when it comes to diet.
“So what does that do for men or boys who want to eat healthy? It means having to decide to be unmasculine right? There's challenges to how you eat,” says Beagan.
Race and ethnic background also influenced healthy eating.
“What does it mean if you're from an ethnic minority group or racialized group and you're being told you should eat healthy and this is a particular way of eating healthy, but it's also a white way of eating, then what happens to your race, your ethnicity? How do you present that through food in a different way?”
Beagan acknowledges that this research doesn't have immediate policy implications, but she hopes it will influence the way health professionals think about healthy eating and the implications of asking people to change how they eat.
“Eating is a highly social thing, and there's a huge amount of identity wrapped up in what we decide to eat and not eat every day and you can't just make that go away by telling someone they should eat in accordance with nutritional science,” says Beagan.
