When nutritional guidelines and life collide: family fruit and vegetable socialisation practices in low socioeconomic communities

Abstract

Parents play a critical role in promoting fruit and vegetable consumption, for eating patterns established early in life tend to persist into adulthood. Despite this, the factors that facilitate or inhibit parents’ capacity to socialise fruit and vegetable consumption into their children’s daily diets remain poorly defined. Thirty-eight semi-structured interviews with residents, allied healthcare professionals, community leaders, community programme leaders and a local government leader living or working in two low socioeconomic suburbs were consequently conducted to ascertain factors exogenous and endogenous to the family unit that shaped parental food socialisation practices. Budgetary and time constraints emerged as exogenous factors that constrained fruit and vegetable socialisation. Constraining effects were also found for a range of endogenous factors, including commensal experiences, children’s food fussiness and the feeding styles employed by parents. As such, while many caregivers may wish to socialise fruit and vegetable consumption into their children’s daily diets, their capacity to do so is often inhibited by factors beyond their volitional control. Failure to take heed of these factors could therefore result in the development of social marketing campaigns that are ineffective at best or give rise to unintentionally harmful outcomes at worst.

Keywords:

• fruit and vegetable consumption
• socialisation
• family
• children

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie M. Judd

Stephanie M. Judd is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Marketing at Monash University. The focus of her research is on the factors that facilitate or impede the consumption of fruit and vegetables among low and high income communities.

Joshua D. Newton

Joshua D. Newton is a senior research fellow in the Office of the Pro Vice Chancellor, Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University. His research interests include social marketing, particularly in health and environmental contexts, and decision making. Josh has published in a range of journals, including the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Advertising Research, Tourism Management, Psychology and Health, and the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Fiona J. Newton

Fiona J. Newton is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing at Monash University. Her primary research interests are framed around behaviour change communication and health promotion. She has published across a range of health and business journals, including the Journal of Business Research, Psychology and Marketing, Psychology and Health, the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Health Education, the International Journal of Advertising, Industrial Marketing Management, and the Qualitative Research Journal.

Michael T. Ewing

Michael T. Ewing is Alfred Deakin Professor of Marketing and Dean of the Faculty of Business & Law at Deakin University. Mike’s research interests include marketing communications, social marketing, and marketing strategy. He has published 115 articles in refereed international journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, the International Journal of Research in Marketing and Social Science & Medicine.