| Obesity and overweight are rampant in the U.S., where more than half of adults are overweight (AICR, 2000) and one third are classified as obese (Rosenbaum et al., 1997). Public health interventions aimed at tackling the problem have failed (UDHHS, 2000). These strategies, however, typically rely on a number of assumptions: (1) that nutrition knowledge and health education influence the choices people make about food; (2) that women remain the gatekeepers of American food consumption at the household level; (3) that discernible patterns of food intake exist and are predictable according to age, ethnicity, SES, level of education, and geography; and, (4) that targeting the individual, rather than the environment or agent of disease, is the most effective means of addressing the problem (Glanz et al., 1997; Hochbaum et al., 1992; Bandura, 1997). An ethnographic study of 66 southern California women suggests these assumptions are false. The data indicate accurate knowledge about nutrition and health exists among all subgroups, but is most often not the salient variable with regard to food selection. Food choice among women is instead influenced to a greater degree by identity and concerns with body image. Data also indicate children, rather than adults, are increasingly the gatekeepers of the American food system and that patterns of dietary intake based on social class, ethnicity, and levels of education, if they did exist, are disappearing under the onslaught of pressures associated with work, time, and children. Given these results, it is suggested the best means of addressing problems of dietary modification are those that target the environment and the agent (the food itself) rather than the individual. |
