Injustice in the HEB
Last week after class, Courtney, Julia, and Morgan went to the big HEB in San Marcos to look at the injustice of parents buying unhealthy foods for their families. This is a problem for several reasons:
· First, young children often don’t know enough about health and nutrition to make informed decisions about their diet or contradict their parents’ dietary decisions.
· Second, even if children know better than to eat the unhealthy foods their parents buy, they don’t have the economic means to feed themselves. If their parents choose to buy unhealthy food despite the children’s concerns, the children must eat it or go hungry.
· Third, the unhealthy food choices parents make affect their children doubly. On one level, it’s bad for the children when they eat it. On another level, it is bad for the parents when they eat it and their poor health can have even more negative consequences for the children.
We observed between five and ten parents (single and paired), including one obviously pregnant woman, buying groceries for their families, and all but one set of them had unhealthy food and beverage products in their shopping carts. We assumed the people we observed were parents either because they had products targeted toward children in their cart or they had children shopping with them. Even when the parents had unhealthy foods in their carts, they tended to also have some healthy foods, as well. Additionally, the parents who had more children with them tended to have more unhealthy foods and drinks in their carts. The foods and beverages we viewed as unhealthy included processed foods like American cheese, chips, crackers, hot dogs and sausage, cereal, other boxed snacks, ice cream, frozen pizza, and soda. On the other hand, we considered healthy, whole foods to be products like vegetables, fruits, unprocessed meats, dairy, and eggs.
Other noteworthy observations we made concerned race and sex. Most of the parents we observed buying unhealthy foods were Hispanic. The one set of parents that had only healthy food and drink in their cart looked white, and they had three small children with them. We also noticed that, when comparing the individual female parent shoppers to the individual male parent shoppers (whether they were “single” or not), the females tended to buy more than the males, potentially playing into the stereotypical gender role of mother as homemaker. The fact that one father/son shopping duo only had about three items in their basket, in addition to the time of day we conducted our observation, might also indicate that several of these parents were merely shopping to fill in the gaps of their food stocks. There are several factors involved in these trends as well as several possible explanations behind what we observed. It would be difficult to make assumptions, however, based on the limited information we had.
That said, our primary goal in this observation was to validate our belief that parents frequently buy unhealthy foods and drinks for their families, which we were able to do. If we were to take this observation further—into “action”—we would conduct more research to find out what the patterns of parent grocery shoppers are and the reasons behind those patterns, educate the community about the importance of making healthy food choices when grocery shopping, and find other ways to take action on the issue, for example through legislature, boycotts, organization partnerships with HEB, etc.
(This blog post was collaboratively written by the three of us.)
· First, young children often don’t know enough about health and nutrition to make informed decisions about their diet or contradict their parents’ dietary decisions.
· Second, even if children know better than to eat the unhealthy foods their parents buy, they don’t have the economic means to feed themselves. If their parents choose to buy unhealthy food despite the children’s concerns, the children must eat it or go hungry.
· Third, the unhealthy food choices parents make affect their children doubly. On one level, it’s bad for the children when they eat it. On another level, it is bad for the parents when they eat it and their poor health can have even more negative consequences for the children.
We observed between five and ten parents (single and paired), including one obviously pregnant woman, buying groceries for their families, and all but one set of them had unhealthy food and beverage products in their shopping carts. We assumed the people we observed were parents either because they had products targeted toward children in their cart or they had children shopping with them. Even when the parents had unhealthy foods in their carts, they tended to also have some healthy foods, as well. Additionally, the parents who had more children with them tended to have more unhealthy foods and drinks in their carts. The foods and beverages we viewed as unhealthy included processed foods like American cheese, chips, crackers, hot dogs and sausage, cereal, other boxed snacks, ice cream, frozen pizza, and soda. On the other hand, we considered healthy, whole foods to be products like vegetables, fruits, unprocessed meats, dairy, and eggs.
Other noteworthy observations we made concerned race and sex. Most of the parents we observed buying unhealthy foods were Hispanic. The one set of parents that had only healthy food and drink in their cart looked white, and they had three small children with them. We also noticed that, when comparing the individual female parent shoppers to the individual male parent shoppers (whether they were “single” or not), the females tended to buy more than the males, potentially playing into the stereotypical gender role of mother as homemaker. The fact that one father/son shopping duo only had about three items in their basket, in addition to the time of day we conducted our observation, might also indicate that several of these parents were merely shopping to fill in the gaps of their food stocks. There are several factors involved in these trends as well as several possible explanations behind what we observed. It would be difficult to make assumptions, however, based on the limited information we had.
That said, our primary goal in this observation was to validate our belief that parents frequently buy unhealthy foods and drinks for their families, which we were able to do. If we were to take this observation further—into “action”—we would conduct more research to find out what the patterns of parent grocery shoppers are and the reasons behind those patterns, educate the community about the importance of making healthy food choices when grocery shopping, and find other ways to take action on the issue, for example through legislature, boycotts, organization partnerships with HEB, etc.
(This blog post was collaboratively written by the three of us.)
