Food, Culture, and Obesity in a French Population

佛罗里达大学的研究生斯泰西·A. Giroux，在H博士的指导下。罗素·伯纳德将进行社会文化研究，探讨如何在个人和家庭层面理解和采取行动，改变国家饮食文化。有大量证据表明，世界各地的饮食习惯正在发生变化，趋同于高脂肪和糖以及低纤维的类似饮食。许多国家的超重和肥胖率也在不断上升。本项目将调查这一全球现象的社会和文化基础。研究将在法国卢瓦尔地区进行，这是一个具有浓厚饮食文化传统的地方。研究人员将收集有关法国人如何表达和体验饮食变化的数据，以及饮食习惯和饮食文化的变化如何影响他们的健康。她将采用定性和定量研究方法的混合，包括参与者在购物和准备膳食时对线人的观察，以及沿着的非结构化和半结构化采访。她将使用认知人类学的数据引出任务来模拟文化食物主题，然后她将通过文化共识和和谐分析来评估显着性和个体对应性。此外，还将收集身体质量指数信息和社交网络数据，以测试个人网络特征和健康饮食文化模式与肥胖实际发生之间的潜在关系。该研究将为科学理解改变世界饮食及其对健康影响的社会文化途径做出重要贡献。本研究也将有助于研究生的教育。

University of Florida graduate student, Stacey A. Giroux, under the direction of Dr. H. Russell Bernard, will undertake sociocultural research on how changes in national dietary cultures are understood and acted upon at the level of the individual and household. There is abundant evidence that eating practices are changing worldwide, converging toward similar diets that are high in fat and sugar and low in fiber. Many nations also have escalating rates of overweight and obesity. This project will investigate the social and cultural foundations of this global phenomenon.The research will be carried out in Loire region of France, a place with strong cultural traditions in food. The researcher will collect data on how dietary changes are articulated and experienced by the French, and how the shifts in food practices and food cultures have affected their health. She will employ a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, including participant observation of her informants as they shop and prepare meals, along with unstructured and semi-structured interviewing. She will use cognitive anthropological data elicitation tasks to model cultural food themes, she will then evaluate for saliency and individual correspondence through cultural consensus and consonance analysis. Body Mass Index information and social network data will be collected, as well, to test potential relationships among personal network features and cultural models about healthy diets and the actual onset of obesity.The research is signficant in the contribution it will make to the scientific understanding of the sociocultural pathways of changing world diets and their effects of health. The research also will contribute to the education of a graduate student.