This project focuses on understanding how people manage the many factors that influence their food choices including psychological, social, personal, economic, and environmental factors as well as life course events and experiences. Through qualitative, in-depth interviews and surveys with adults, we learn how people experience food and eating and their views on the barriers and enablers to positive nutrition behaviors. A key finding in the past year is that, in contrast to nutritionists who tend to view eating episodes primarily from a food and nutrient perspective, people experience eating episodes as intertwined with their daily lives and as having many aspects that relate to time, place, activities, social setting, physical condition, and mental processes. Our multi-dimensional model for eating episodes highlights the many different aspects of the situation that must be identified to understand the foods and beverages that a person consumes. Our data also reveal that people hold mental maps that organize foods according to eating situations, in contrast to nutritionists who typically organize foods according to nutrients or other properties of the food. The concepts, tools, and theoretical frameworks that we have developed can be used by researchers who study how characteristics of people and environments shape eating habits and by nutrition educators in their efforts to promote healthy eating environments and healthy eating habits among the US population.

The high and increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in the US puts many individuals at risk for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, osteoarthritis, and some forms of cancer, health issues that result in shortened life spans and reduced quality of life for the individual and high medical expenses for all types of payers. Obesity and overweight are caused by a complex set of interacting determinants related to genetics, metabolism, behavior, and social and physical environments. Reversing the trend of escalating rates of overweight and obesity requires multifaceted interventions including efforts at the individual, community, environment, and policy levels. Dietary change is a complex phenomena that is poorly understood. Prior work among individuals highly motivated to change indicates that many circumstances and situational factors interfere with the best intentions for healthy eating practices. An advanced food system and abundant food supply provide many food options and opportunities to eat for most people, while job and family responsibilities leave many people with feelings of time scarcity with less time and energy to devote to food and eating. Traditional meal patterns have yielded to new ways of eating allowing people to construct their own ways of food and beverage consumption. More meals and snacks are prepared away from home, contributing to high caloric intake and low levels of nutrients compared to home-prepared foods

We studied 21 men and 21 women in Central New York who worked in diverse, non-professional and non-managerial occupations. Varying in age and living situation, they explained how their eating/drinking episodes were embedded in their daily schedules and linked to family and work responsibilities. They completed 7 consecutive-day, 24-hr qualitative situational dietary recalls in which they were asked open-ended questions about their eating and drinking episodes. From their interview transcripts, we developed a conceptual framework for eating/drinking episodes that portrays them as having the following eight dimensions: food and drink consumed, location, time, activities, social setting, mental processes, physical condition, and recurrence. In the interviews, we also asked participants to classify a set of 59 food cards in 4 different contexts to identify their food choice schemas or mental maps for organizing foods. Participants grouped the cards into piles in any way that made sense to them and assigned labels to each pile of cards. The 991 different labels that were generated by the 42 participants were analyzed using the constant comparative method. Participants frequently grouped the cards according to characteristics of the eating situation or their personal experiences. They less often grouped the cards according to properties of the foods on nutrient composition.

The multi-dimensional model for eating and drinking episodes provides insights into nutrition practice by suggesting areas of questioning that nutrition counselors can use in assessing clients’ nutrition practices. Study participants reported that these multiple 24-hr situational recalls also heightened their awareness of their eating practices and motivations. The model also suggests that researchers should pursue the gathering and analysis of situational data when studying food consumption of populations. The findings that participants often classified foods by context suggests that audiences might find nutrition messages as more relevant if the messages focused on situations rather than solely on foods grouped by nutrients