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A healthful home food environment: is it possible amidst household chaos and parental stress?
The purpose of this 2019 study was to examine the link between household chaos/unmanaged parental stress, and the home food environment (perceived barriers to cooking, healthful home food availability, frequency of family meals). The intention was to gather useful data that would help future interventions promote healthful home food environments. Household chaos was determined by frenetic activity, loud noises, and disorder, while parental stress was measured using ratio of perceived stress and ability to manage stress. Increased household chaos and parental stress were both associated with having family meals less often, and greater perceived barriers to mealtime preparation. Among families with higher chaos, those that have at least 7 family meals per week were significantly more likely to report fewer barriers to mealtime preparation, to have younger children, and to have higher healthful home food availability than families who ate together less often. Moreover, higher unmanaged parental stress correlated with lower healthful home food availability. In conclusion, interventions looking to help parents with the management of stress and chaos within the home environment ought to eat family meals more often. [NPID: home environment, food environment, food availability, healthy, stress, parents, children, family meals, barriers, meal prep, meal preparation, chaos, interventions]
Year: 2019
