TY - JOUR
T1 - It is Hard to Swim Upstream
T2 - Dietary Acculturation Among Mexican-Origin Children
AU - Van Hook, Jennifer
AU - Quiros, Susana
AU - Frisco, Michelle L.
AU - Fikru, Emnet
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (R24 HD041025 and P01 HD062498).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2016/4/1
Y1 - 2016/4/1
N2 - Health and immigration researchers often implicate dietary acculturation in explanations of Mexican children of immigrants’ weight gain after moving to the U.S., but rarely explore how diet is shaped by immigrants’ structural incorporation. We used data from the 1999/00-2009/10 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to assess how indicators of Mexican-origin children’s acculturation and structural incorporation influence two outcomes: how healthy and how “Americanized” children’s diets are. Indicators of acculturation were strongly associated with more Americanized and less healthy diets. However, structural incorporation indicators were mostly unrelated to diet outcomes net of acculturation. An exception was that parental education was positively associated with consuming a healthy diet. Finally, children of natives consumed more Americanized, unhealthy diets than children of immigrants and these differences were largely explained by differences in the acculturation. Children of natives would have consumed an even less healthy diet were it not for their higher levels of parental education. Overall, the results suggest that the process of adapting to the U.S. life style is associated with the loss of cultural culinary preferences and less healthy eating behaviors despite improvements in socioeconomic status.
AB - Health and immigration researchers often implicate dietary acculturation in explanations of Mexican children of immigrants’ weight gain after moving to the U.S., but rarely explore how diet is shaped by immigrants’ structural incorporation. We used data from the 1999/00-2009/10 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to assess how indicators of Mexican-origin children’s acculturation and structural incorporation influence two outcomes: how healthy and how “Americanized” children’s diets are. Indicators of acculturation were strongly associated with more Americanized and less healthy diets. However, structural incorporation indicators were mostly unrelated to diet outcomes net of acculturation. An exception was that parental education was positively associated with consuming a healthy diet. Finally, children of natives consumed more Americanized, unhealthy diets than children of immigrants and these differences were largely explained by differences in the acculturation. Children of natives would have consumed an even less healthy diet were it not for their higher levels of parental education. Overall, the results suggest that the process of adapting to the U.S. life style is associated with the loss of cultural culinary preferences and less healthy eating behaviors despite improvements in socioeconomic status.
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U2 - 10.1007/s11113-015-9381-x
DO - 10.1007/s11113-015-9381-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84952031020
SN - 0167-5923
VL - 35
SP - 177
EP - 196
JO - Population Research and Policy Review
JF - Population Research and Policy Review
IS - 2
ER -