Food habits

The purpose of this study is to determine the daily components
of the Maya diet from the pre-Conquest era to the
present and designate any commodities that have been subject
to change. Beliefs that deal with subsistence and the
family hearth are slow to evolve, maintaining great stability
over the centuries in traditional communities. Foods
are combined in classic formal patterns that take on the
appearance of a rite. To emphasize the ritualistic nature
of these culinary practices, the author has assigned them
the term, hearthrites. Hearthrites may pertain to either
the secular or ceremonial hearth and provide an invaluable
tool for calculating the dietary status of peasant populations.
It is possible to reconstruct menus from the past by
the use of several techniques. Fieldwork was conducted in a
small Yucatecan village to observe hearthrites and determine
the nature of contemporary eating habits. Results of this
study were compared to information gleaned from ancient
ceremonies, manuscripts, legends, and language to provide a
firm basis for projecting areas of continuity or change.

Registered dietitians, while knowledgeable in food and nutrition, are also intrinsically educators, a role that is now receiving in-depth exploration. As nutrition educators or counselors, dietitians have been stereotyped as food cops (Licavoli, 1995, p. 751); that is, individuals who provide the dos and don'ts list. Research in the area of nutrition education may foster movement away from this stereotype. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of traditional nutrition counseling with stage-matched nutrition counseling by registered dietitians using clients in acute care settings while measuring behavioral and cognitive change outcomes. An experimental design using randomly assigned subjects to a control and two experimental groups was utilized. A pretest-posttest design was employed with a 3 month interval between the pretest and posttest. The treatment variables consisted of stage-matched intervention with feedback and stage-matched intervention without feedback. Subjects were recruited from the patient population of dietitians employed in the fourth largest public health care system in the United States based in Broward County, Florida. Two training sessions lasting 2 hours each focused on stage-matched intervention, and the research protocol was provided to prepare dietitians to work with the experimental groups. The small sample size limited the ability to generalize the findings, and interpretation of the study results was done within the context of this limitation. This study indicated the following trends: (a) subjects exposed to the NRCQ and the FRAMES model of intervention improved significantly from preintervention to postintervention compared with subjects not exposed; (b) prior to intervention, the majority of subjects were classified in Preaction Stages and postintervention classified in the Action Stage; (c) stage-matched changes were correlated with body mass index; and (d) there was no difference indicated in nutrient intake between subjects in the control and the experimental groups. Findings at this level were encouraging and consistent with the concepts of the transtheoretical model of change (TTM) and the FRAMES model. The TTM continues to be a growing area in the field of nutrition, and dietitians should receive early educational exposure so that it becomes an accepted part of the practice domain.

In the modern United States, capitalism is the predominant cultural value that structures the food system. The current American relationship to food is strained, at best, as two-thirds of Americans experience overweight and obesity and are at risk for a number of serious health complications. An understanding of the historic and political-economic aspects of the American food system is necessary to address the effects of our modern food habits on our ideas of our selves. This thesis analyzes the types of foods Americans eat, why they make the food choices that they do, how they feel about their eating habits and their habits' effects on their bodies, and how this all relates to our sense of identity as Americans.

This study explores the perceived elitism within both the environmentalist community and general public in regards to "environmental diets" such as : vegetarianism, veganism, locavore-ism, and ethical omnivory. I explore these diets and potential expressions of elitism within the framework developed by Morrison and Dunlap in their discussion of environmental elitism. Examples come from published sources as well as personal anecdotes. Through this study, I suggest that this perceived elitism is actually not elitism per se, but a very thin line of tension between describing the ideal food systems aside the current state of food inequity and industrial agriculture. Simply, I am trying to grapple with how to be educated in the fields of Food Studies and systems of oppression without perpetuating elitism alongside the system which desperately needs reform.