Diverse Food Items Are Similarly Categorized by 8- to 13-year-old Children
Abstract
Objective
Assess how 8- to 13-year-old children categorized and labeled food items for possible use as part of a food search strategy in a computerized 24-hour dietary recall.
Design
A set of 62 cards with pictures and names of food items from 18 professionally defined food groups was sorted by each child into piles of similar food items.
Setting
Participants attended the Children's Nutrition Research Center in the summer 2006.
Participants
148 8- to 13-year-old children (132 English speaking, 16 primarily Spanish speaking).
Main Outcome Measures
Sorting of food items into common groupings and their names.
Analyses
Robinson matrices for identification of clusters of food items.
Results
Children created on average 11.1 (± 4.4) piles with 5.4 (± 4.9) cards per pile. Robinson matrix clusters captured 92.4% of the variance in the sorting of food cards. No substantial differences in Robinson clustering were detected across subcategories for each of the demographic characteristics. The label names provided by the children were most frequently categorized as “Taxonomic-Professional” (42.5%), such as meat, fruit, and drinks; or “Script” (26.4%), such as breakfast food, desserts, and snacks.
Conclusion and Implications
Children categorized food items into similar clusters but used diverse names to label them. These categories may be used to facilitate food search for researchers in a computerized 24-hour dietary recall for children in this age group.
1Department of Pediatrics, Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
2Formerly with the Department of Pediatrics, Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. Currently at the University of Florida, Gainesville
Address for correspondence: Tom Baranowski, PhD, Department of Pediatrics, Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, 1100 Bates St, Houston, TX 77030; Phone: (713) 798-6762; Fax: (713) 798-7098
This research was funded primarily by a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (5 U44 DK66724-01). This work is also a publication of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/ARS) Children's Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, and has been funded in part with federal funds from the USDA/ARS under Cooperative Agreement No. 58-6250-6001.
ABSTRACT