With this in mind, globalisation has brought on increasingly busy work and social lives for parents, meaning they have less spare time to spend on providing healthy home-cooked food, this increases the usage of quick, cheap meals that are low in nutritional quality. Whilst globalisation has increased the range of foods available locally, a desire for cheap, efficient production within the food industry has emerged. Using food as a huge profit mechanism has somewhat masked how food environments can control individual food behaviours and choices, as food trends and advertising becomes more prominent and persuasive. Although humans can control what they physically put in their mouths, they are unable to control which foods they can access, afford, …show more content…
In 1916 America, Coca Cola sold 7.5 ounce bottles (90 calories), this can now reach up to 32 ounces (380 calories) (French et al., 2001), this additionally provides evidence for growing trends to obtain calories through beverages as well as foods. Whilst an average American bagel in 1980 would have averaged at 3 inch diameter (~140 calories), this has risen to 6 inches (~ 350 calories). Marketing these products as ‘one portion’ allows persons to become normalised to this size and allows them to automatically assume this is the correct amount for a balanced diet, despite the fact that every individual (especially children) have unique energy requirements. Contemporary demand for ‘value for money’ sees most striving for as much food as possible for the lowest cost, …show more content…
Data, based on American national statistics, indicates that portion size alone accounts for 17 - 19% of national variance in child energy intake (McConahy et al., 2004); associating larger portions with higher intakes and vice versa. In addition, children with a higher BMI consume food portions as high as 100% larger than those of normal BMIs, indicating children become normalised to these sizes and eventually adopt them as habits (McConahy et al., 2002). These analyses alone do not confirm this causation as they fail to account for the relative energy density of the foods consumed but, based on other ecological factors such as parental attitudes, portion size is very likely to be contributing