Ecology of Food and Nutrition (EFN) promotes scholarly discussion and engagement on the holistic and cross-cultural dimensions of the study of food and nutrition. Articles published in this journal focus on foods and food systems not only in terms of their utilization to satisfy human nutritional needs and health, but also how social and cultural factors relate to food, food cultures, and nutrition. Only a handful of journals publish articles that explicitly address the intersections of food and nutrition, biology and culture, and policy and practice from a holistic and global perspective. It is this kind of scholarship that EFN seeks to promote. This issue of EFN includes seven articles based on scholarly research conducted in countries South Africa, Ethiopia, Korea, India, Iran, and the United States. The articles focus on a range of topics including the concordance/discordance related to nutritional knowledge and food preferences of parents and children, household food security, food consumption patterns, health, and diabetes, intergenerational transitions of food perceptions and food preferences, and infant and young children feeding practices.
Melissa Brown and Nicolette Roman used self-reported data from parents or primary caregivers of children aged 3–18 years to examine the relationship between nutritional knowledge, parenting style, and feeding practices in an ethnically diverse group of South African parents. The researchers recruited study participants via an online social media platform. The results of the study suggest that parents were likely to encourage their children to consume diverse and balanced diets. They were willing to serve as role models to encourage healthy eating behavior and restrict the intake of unhealthy food by their children.
The article by Nezlek and Forestell examines the relationship between vegetarianism and socio-political attitudes and voting behavior among undergraduate students attending a university in the United States of America. The data for this study were collected using an online platform. The results of the study suggest that, as compared to vegetarians and semi-vegetarians, omnivores were more likely to strongly favor conservative policies, identify more closely with the Republican party, and were likely to be less liberal.
The article by Choi et al. focuses on the association between the frequency of dining out and the risk of obesity, diabetes mellitus, and dyslipidemia among Korean adults. The authors present the results of a cross-sectional survey of 640 participants (20–69 years). The authors conclude that those participants who rarely dined out had lower levels of hyperglycemia as compared to those who dined out 1–2 times or more than 3 times per week. The authors also report that participants with a high frequency of dining out were younger and had higher levels of education and income than participants in the other two groups.
Focusing on the importance of infant and young child feeding for optimal growth, better health, and development, the article by Wuneh et al. examines the minimum dietary diversity and maximum meal frequency practices among children 6–23 months in Agro pastoral communities in the Afar region in Ethiopia. The authors present the results of a community-based cross-sectional study using an interviewer-administered questionnaire for data collection. Wuneh et al. report that, as compared to communities living in other parts of Ethiopia, relatively low number (around 21%) of children who participated in the study received the minimum dietary diversity and low number (around 43%) of children received the minimum recommended meal frequency. The authors suggest that these differences may be due to a range of factors, including food availability, feeding practices, household socio-economic status, maternal education, sex of the child, and cultural beliefs surrounding feeding practices of infants and young children.
Punia and Kaushik report the results of an innovative community-based study to assess the level of food and nutrition security in small and marginal farm families in two districts in Haryana, a state in northern India. The authors focused on livelihood security analysis – availability, accessibility, quality, and status of food and nutrition in the household. The results of the study suggest that the majority (nearly 70%) of farm families relied on their own farm production for food and nearly 67% families were food and nutrition secure. These families had median dietary diversity score and women and children in these families had normal body mass index (BMI).
The article by Ekhlaspour et al. presents the results of a study examining the status of food security and its socio-demographic underpinnings in households in Baft, Iran. The authors implemented the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Security questionnaire to assess the level of food security in 702 households in the city. The results show that nearly one-third of the households experienced some degree of food insecurity. Furthermore, the authors suggest that household food insecurity is associated with several socio-demographic characteristics, including household size, the age and employment status of household members, and access to state-supported welfare facilities.
Finally, the article by Fuster et al. presents the results of a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews to examine the perceived connections between culture and food practices among Latino pre-adolescents (9–12 years) and their parents. Based on the results of the study, the authors suggest that pre-adolescents’ perceptions of food and eating practices as healthy or unhealthy were similar to that of their parents. Based on the findings of this study, the authors strongly advocate for future public health interventions targeting Latino families to include strategies to help parents navigate new food environments in the U.S., while enjoying traditional cultural foods.