How Attitude Affects Eating Habits

By Peter Liu
[Nutrition & Diet]
How much does your work schedule influence your eating habits and well being?  Peter Liu explores the risks of balancing a busy lifestyle with healthy eating.
In the modern society that we’re used to, the daily nine to five is now often much longer than that.  As employees or bosses of one sort or another we need to juggle work responsibilities on and off the clock.  In the midst of all that, finding and preparing the right foods to eat can be a challenging affair, especially if you’re used to either not having time to eat right or just eating what you choose.  Depending on the type of eater you are your food habits revolve heavily around your daily schedule and that can have a large impact on the health of your diet.  For women who also have families to take care of on top of ruling the working world, eating right can easily be put on the backburner in the face of such responsibility.  With the food industry constantly pumping out unhealthy products geared towards convenience and simplicity, fighting off weight gain can be an uphill battle.

Analyzing Attitudes

A new study published in the December issue of the journal Health Education and Behavior sought to discover how attitudes toward eating affect obesity levels in middle-aged women.  Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Food Industry Center gathered 200 middle-aged female participants to find out if their work and family lives affected their eating habits to a large degree.  The women had an average age of 46, were highly educated, employed and most of them were white.  The volunteers were questioned about their eating habits and had their Body Mass Index, waist size and body fat percentages measured.  Then, according to the information gathered, the women were separated into several subgroups based on their “food attitudes” as indicators of obesity level.

The groups included women who were described as impulsive eaters, guilt-ridden dieters, creative cooks, busy cooking avoiders and women who were concerned about nutrition.  Of the five groups of women, researchers found that the impulsive eaters had the highest average waist circumference overall.  The busy cooking avoiders group all had much higher energy intake compared to the other groups.  The impulsive eaters and guilt-ridden dieters had the highest potential obesity score overall, followed by the busy cooking avoiders.  The healthiest two groups included the women that were concerned about nutrition and the creative cooks, scoring lowest in weight category and having an average BMI and body fat percentage lower than the guilt-ridden dieters group.

Scheduling Conflicts

The authors of the study suspect the different attitudes towards healthy eating and food preparation are due to the busy schedules the women have to live by.  Eating right either becomes a secondary issue or time constraints simply don’t allow for the right kind of eating.  Women with families to provide for and take care of may consider healthy eating as less of a priority because their primary focus is set on providing healthy eating for their families first.  Meanwhile, the subgroup of women in the job industry with too much responsibility to juggle may simply classify mealtime as a secondary issue in the face of their hectic schedules.  Researchers also assumed some women used food as a self-reward system or a coping system to deal with their busy lives.
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