On Deviated Food habit in Infancy

Abstract

School boys and girls of fifth grade totaling 3568 were subjected to the present survey. They were from 40 schools in various parts of Japan: Tohoku, Shikoku, and Chugoku. Mountainous-rural, urban, and coastal distrcits were equally represented.Items examined included the extroversion-introversion test, likes and dislikes of food. as referred to material, ways of cookery, as well as frequency of ingestion; together with the socio-economic status and occupation of the parent and family structure.Result:1. When pupils with extrovert tendency, as represented by deviation indices above 55, . were compared with those with introvert tendency, i. e. deviation indices below 44, the former group accept most food freely, in contrast with the latter group, although preference is given to meats and potato against carrot. Extrovert pupils have no discrimination in ways of cookery. Urban children consume meat more frequently. The same difference was also confirmed in extrovert children with deviation indices above 72 vis-a-vis introvert pupils with indices below 27.2. Extrovert children take food more freely with less discrimination, without regard to the parent's occupation, whether white-collared or blue collared. The same freedom is observed in extrovert children from greater-sized families. Similar trend of free food acceptance exists in eldest or intermediate children as contrasted to youngest or only children with equally extrovert tendency.3. Sociometric tests revealed that children of unpopular type with free food acceptance, from families of physical labourers, belong mostly to the group of extrovert tendency. Types of family structure characteristic to such children are: (i) single parent, (ii) presence of one or both grand-parents in the household, (iii) only son in the otherwise female sibship, or (iv) the eldest son in cases of mixed sibship.Consideration:1. As regards to a common saying: the extrovert are meat-eaters and the introvert are vegetable-eaters, the authoress established that the extrovert have a general tendency of free acceptance of food, while no data supporting the popular theory that the introvert are vegetable-eaters were obtained from variously tried computations. Influence on the personality of the child may come from the complex of socio-economic conditions and mental milieu factors such as living standards, cultural pattern of the community or the household, job-nature and job-status of the family supporting member (s), composition of the family and the family-size.2. As to the terminology, imbalance in the routinely taken food composition is expressed by the term, “unbalanced food habit” among nutritionists and dietitians. The authoress study, however, concerns the behavioral deviation in food discrimination.