The role of well-being and food involvement in determining the dietary quality of disadvantaged women

Abstract

Women who are disadvantaged by leaving school with a few or no qualifications eat a less balanced and poorer-quality diet than women with qualifications (1) . Our previous research suggests that women of lower educational attainment (LEA) also have lower levels of food involvement (2) . Food involvement summarises the priority someone gives to food from its acquisition through to its disposal and is assessed using a validated questionnaire (3) . Our qualitative data suggest that women of LEA may have lower food involvement because they value themselves too little to spend time and effort preparing food for themselves (4) . This contrasts with women of higher educational attainment (HEA) who appear to place a higher priority on feeding themselves good food. We do not know whether poorer well-being of women of LEA is directly associated with having a poorer-quality diet. We therefore set out to answer two questions: (1) are there differences in well-being in women of LEA and women of HEA and are these differences associated with differences in food involvement in women of LEA and HEA? (2) Do differences in well-being and food involvement explain differences in the dietary quality between women of LEA and HEA? We conducted a cross-sectional survey assessing educational attainment, food involvement, well-being and quality of diet (5) in 1022 women attending Sure Start Children’s Centres and baby clinics in Hampshire, UK. Validated assessment measures were used.