THURSDAY, April 22, 2004 (HealthDayNews) -- Living in poverty during childhood, where there may be no emphasis on healthy foods, can affect a person's eating habits later in life.
That's according to a study that explored mother-daughter communication about food among low-income black American women.
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers conducted focus groups with 21 black women, aged 25 to 65, in rural South Carolina churches to find out how the women learned about nutrition and body size norms from their mothers.
The focus groups revealed that, as children, the women grew up being grateful for the food their mothers served at home. There was no emphasis placed on certain foods being healthier than other foods. However, the women recalled that vegetables were a primary food source. That's because many of the families had home gardens.
The women said they learned a lot about foods and food preparation by watching their mothers in the kitchen. The women also said they were taught to eat all of what was served at meals because food could be scarce at times.
The study found that younger and older women in the focus groups had different eating habits. The younger women said their current eating habits were different from the eating habits they learned while growing up at home.
The younger women said that, due to work and home schedules, they now ate more fast food and fewer home-cooked meals than they did when they were children.
Compared to the older women in the focus groups, the younger women were more interested in losing weight because they'd witnessed family members suffer health problems from being overweight.
"Clearly, eating patterns established in childhood have long-lasting effects and may be hard to modify even when information about healthy eating and access to healthy food is provided," study author Diane Baer Wilson, an associate professor of internal medicine and a researcher at the university's Massey Cancer Center, said in a prepared statement.
"Clinicians working with low-income African-American women should address overeating from a perspective of early food scarcity, reverence for the role of mother in obtaining and preparing food, and a respect for the cultural differences in body size norms," Wilson said.
The study appears in the April issue of the Journal of Cultural Diversity.
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