Food knowledge, loss aversion, and complementary feeding

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 scholarship that EFN seeks to promote. This issue of EFN includes three articles presenting the results of community/population-based studies on food and nutrition.

The article by Sharma et al. presents the results of an interesting study that operationalizes the concept of loss aversion in food studies. The article examines whether middle and high school students in a U.S. public school are averse to loss of time, which could in turn influence their food choice behaviors. Broadly, the concept of loss aversion is often used in behavioral economics to describe an individual’s tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains or as Kahnemam and Tversky put it, “losses loom larger than gains” (Kahneman and Tversky 1979). Sharma and colleagues measured student preferences between pre-plated food choices and that for time during school lunch activity. Based on comprehensive data collected over an 18-day-period, Sharma and colleagues suggest that when controlled for food quality and quantity, the students showed a preference for a faster service lane of pre-plated food in comparison to a regular service lane. The authors conclude their article by discussing the possible policy implications of their work to improve the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).

The article by Aktac and colleagues is based on a cross-sectional evaluation of the effectiveness of a nutrition education program to improve the knowledge of pregnant woman seeking prenatal care at a local health center in Istanbul, Turkey. The nutritional education program, which is the focus of this study, broadly focused on a number of topics, including adequate and balanced nutrition during pregnancy, healthy weight gain, daily calories/energy requirements, nutritional problems during pregnancy, and food safety. In terms of nutritional knowledge, the authors report significant improvement among women, partly as a result of their participation in the nutrition education program, relative to level of education, employment, and the number of previous pregnancies.

In their article, Iqbal and colleagues use a qualitative design and the socio-ecological framework to describe the factors that influence maternal complementary feeding behavior. The broad goal of their study is to develop culturally appropriate maternal nutrition education program aimed at improving the iron status of children aged 9–24 months. Complementary feeding involves the addition of family foods to a child’s diet. During this critical period of growth and development (6–24 months), nutrient deficiencies, especially those related to iron, could lead to undernutrition among children under 5 years of age. Iqbal and colleagues used socio-demographic and qualitative research methods to understand study participants’ behaviors, beliefs, and values regarding child feeding practices, in general, and complementary feeding of children, in particular, in a community in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The authors report some very interesting findings, including that study participants (mothers) have some knowledge of the symptoms of anemia among children and that complementary feeding practices are poor often leading to a severe lack of iron-rich foods in a child’s diet in the community.