Critical Transitions & Children's Food Trajectories

Critical Transitions & Children's Food Trajectories: Understanding how eating habits change from infancy to the teenage years and the role of key changes in children's lives

This research project proposes to explore how the dietary habits and eating patterns of children in the UK develop from infancy to early childhood, adolescence and teenage years, and how food trajectories may change or evolve in light of key turning points and critical transitions in children's lives.

Children's changing diets & longitudinal life course perspectives: The importance of understanding food consumption through a life course perspective has been stressed for more than a decade5, and several more recent studies look at how food habits change over time within the context of family life6-8. Longitudinal prospective research offers unique insights on dietary change. For example, research by Uprichard et al.9 uses retrospective recall by a non-random sample of adults to offer an interesting life course analysis of food narratives on how food dislikes change over time as children become adults. Research by Skinner et al.4 using a non-representative US sample found that food preferences established in early childhood are sustained as children grow - though this follow up stopped at age 8. For the UK, lots of interesting research has drawn on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children study, and papers have looked at how children's dietary habits evolve up to age 710.

The importance of critical transitions: While children's diets are constantly subject to alteration11, some 'transitions'12 and 'turning points'13 (such as school transitions, changes in family composition, or in socio-economic circumstances) can affect diets. However, there is a relative paucity of research on this. Research on day-care and schooling mostly focuses on food consumption in the institution14-18, rather than how eating at home may change. Also, income remains a key predictor of food insecurity in children and adults in the UK19,20 and the recent economic downturn is exacerbating the difficulties in eating healthily on a low income21. Yet few studies look at how changes in family income over time relate to changes in children's diets, though a study using Scottish longitudinal data found that for children aged 2 to 5 years old, parental negative feelings towards current income were linked to children decreasing their consumption of healthy food and increasing their consumption of crisps and sweets (though changes in actual family income was not a significant predictor)22.

Limitations of existing literature: there is no study to date which uses longitudinal prospective data to track children's eating habits from infancy to pre-adulthood and which captures enough contextual information, such as communal eating practices within a family, changes in family circumstances and key transitions in children lives. This study will be the first nationally representative UK study to explore how eating habits and patterns change and develop from infancy through pre-adulthood, and will provide a better understanding of how food trajectories develop and change; and the role that key factors, such as schooling, poverty and family changes, play on children's diets.

Project aims: This project will use nationally representative longitudinal survey data for the UK to understand how dietary habits and eating practices develop from infancy to the teenage years, and how key turning points and critical transitions in childhood relate to any potential changes in diets and eating practices. This will be the first study to map food trajectories from infancy up to pre-adulthood using nationally representative data which will investigate how critical events and changes in children's lives may affect their eating practices.