growing menace of nutritional related problems like obesity
Introduction
With the vigorously growing menace of nutritional related problems like obesity, the recently focused research concentrate on the family and the children pattern in terms of their eating behavior and the pattern. The nutritional related research has shown that the eating behaviours of children are influenced by various aspects like the environmental and their physical behavior. the physical aspect, research claimed that children eat what are within their reach
and what they can easily assess
, intriguingly they are likely to take a considerable amount of its portion. Besides, the social influence which emanates from the socioeconomic the varied cultural backgrounds are the paramount aspects like; the ethnicity influence, the parental general care and the time restricting and constrains are the significant factors that determined what the children eat. Furthermore, the family daily programmers like mealtime and the family time like partaking of a meal together, watching a TV together and main source of food to a family can profoundly influence the eating habit of children. Research indicates that the children are imitative and inquisitive; therefore, the eating behaviours of a parent also contribute to the eating behavior of the children. Therefore the informative and transformative health interventions tailored to improve the children nutritional requirements ought to be put in place to address the physical and the social influential behaviours on the children.
The reviewed interventions
The children’s preferences and taste
it should be noted that the children yearn and eat what they can assess. Research indicates that the food acceptance and the nutritional pattern is developed as early two years of age in the children hence the childhood is the appropriate time to inculcate the food acceptance and pattern of eating behavior According to the psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s theory of the conditioned reflex action, it claims that when a particular behavior is repeated regularly, and in close succession, it will be registered in the brain and it remains a repeated behavior. The appropriate setting to initiate and administer this particular intervention is during the family meals, a variety of food ranging from the fruit to other nutritious food. this will not only help to build the culture of the appropriate eating pattern but also help the children to grow with the tende3ncy of accepting various food. Furthermore, in the caption of the food preferences is well expounded in the relevant concept of Rosin’s where it talks about the food neophobia. According to this concept, it claims that the foods neophobia is the apt indicator to the fruits and the vegetable intake. Therefore, children who have little accessibility to a variety of are likely to have a comparatively low fruit and vegetable intake.
The research has shown that the meticulous and the appropriate way to establish food preference for children is by exposing them to a variety of food.
Peer
It is reliably true that the parents are the most fundamental and influential models of their children’s health-related beliefs and general behavior. Nonetheless, they are not the only modelers of the eating behavior of the children. Research establishes that, children’s eating pattern and the behavior is influenced by their peers.
The Freud Sigmund on his theory of the child development , he claim that ,children learn and imitate what they see in their environment and their interactions with peers .Also the Birch concept on the preschool claims that children like uniformity in term of what they eat with age mates as a form of competition among the children. The adolescent are the most considered the most influential in terms of food preferences and the eating behavior. The appropriate setting to administer this health intervention the school setting .This is where most of the children imitate a lot from one another. The research done on the adolescent peers, indicate that the three high consumption of food rich in fats and protein among this special group, hence peer pressure is the appropriate predictor and the indicator of desirable food preferences among the children.
The availability and the accessibility of food
More often than not, children like eating food that they eat most of the time and the food that are preferably available at home most of the time .For instance, if the available food are the fruits, the always tend to develop the tendency of eating more fruits than any other food .The relevant modes in this case are the dieting mothers who take the lead to not only avail the variety of food but also showing them how to balance them appropriately. This health intervention can candidly suit the mealtime setting .Regular availability of variety of food during the meal time enable al child develop a likeability of variety of food hence the right food preference. The various concepts of food and nutrition claims that ,apart from the availability and the accessibility , the food should be of high quality .Baranowski, claims that the availability and the accessibility of edible fruits among the school children is very high regardless of their quality.
The cultural and the parent’s preferences
Considering the children’s preferences and eating behavior, parent are the most forerunners .and the role models. The nutritional and food related knowledge of children are in most cases from their parents. According to research on the nutritional concept, children at the age of two to three entirely associate their eating habit and the food preference with their mother’s. This behavior is attributed to the fact , most of the mothers keep food of their preference around them in turn the children at this age associate them .the most appropriate setting by which this intervention functional is during home setting where parents fully interact with their mothers most of the time .
According to Dennison, the mothers who like and keep the whole milk as their main source of their calcium and other minerals are likely to have the healthier and strong children.
Comparison and the discussion
These general health interventions seen are to enable the general group of people and the specifically the children to improve their nutritional health. Therefore some of the used methods in and the strategies used in this health promotion intervention are like; the role modeling especially by using the set up groups of experienced family , the promoting the health behavior by demonstrating and the sensitization of the community about the health behavior. Comparatively the three health interventional methods are interrelated in that, they the all provide the empirical evidence on the importance of these interventions. For instance , the role modeling using the experienced mothers and the sensitization of the community widen the knowledge on the various methods of the inculcating the good eating behavior pattern .This process can be done by targeting the group of children , and the dieting mothers in their respecting settings . as part of the health interventional strategy, the discussing and demonstrating this health intervention immensely helps to improve the implementation of these health nutritional health promotion among the targeted groups .demonstration can best be done with the school children as part of their learning in the school .For instance a demonstration can done targeting the importance of eating a lot of fruits and the vegetable in comparison to eating food rich in fats. A child therefore will grow having the already change attitude on the importance of fruits and vegetable. Therefore the three strategies if well examined and evaluated, these particular health promotional interventions boost the awareness on the general health of children.
For the certainty of the effectiveness of the mentioned health promotional interventions, appropriate evaluation was done .this process of determining the effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated using the four closely related evaluation methods. The formative evaluation, the process evaluation and the impact evaluation were used .Formative evaluations were tailored to ascertain the effectiveness of this intervention in providing appropriate information on the nutritional health program. This type of evaluation was administered on the target pollution (children) to fully gain the full information on the effectiveness of these interventions .The process evaluation on the other hand was meant to assess the quality of the mentioned health interventions. The quality was evaluated in terms extend to which the mentioned intervention reach in transforming the nutritional program. On the other hand, the impact evaluation was purposed to assess the effect of the health intervention on the target group. For instance the target group in this case was the children and the peers. Comparatively, the three types of evaluation used function in an interrelated manner such that one evaluation leads to the other.
The interventions out comes and limitations on this nutritional program were also notable. Some of the probable outcomes were the improvement on the nutritional general health of children, a drastic change in the attitude towards varieties of various foods among children and the significant prevention on nutrition related diseases. Due to the appropriate sensitization and the well explained interventions lead to this positive outcome. However, the interventions outcomes experience some limitations. The great cultural influence on the food preferences and eating habit among the children were immensely felt. These habits that is culturally inculcated was difficult to be replaced by these various health interventional programs for instance some children and firmly believed in the importance of a given food than others nutritious food hence replacing them was a challenge.