A Healthy, Well-Nourished Population: Conference

Food and Eating Consequences of Time-Use Decisions: A Research and Policy Conference

Abstracts of Conference Presentations

The American Time Use Survey: Operations and Output

This presentation is an overview of the American Time Use Survey. Included are a discussion of the purposes for the survey, the development of the survey methodology, the structure of the survey, the sample stratification, and the operational issues in administering the survey including data file formats. The status of the survey was also discussed.

The Food & Eating Module of the American Time Use Survey

This presentation discussed the planned ERS module to the American Time Use Survey. Topics presented are the research questions driving the data collection; the development of the module, including difficulties in collecting data on eating as a secondary activity and self-reported height and weight; and policy relevance and implications of the possible findings from the data.

Ten Research Questions You Might Answer with ATUS Food-Related Data

We all face basic issues of scarcity of goods and time. This presentation looked into how the ATUS will allow us to study these issues in the area of food and nutrition, including ideas on how to link time use data on food shopping, food consumption and clean-up to other data that indicate spending on food, both at home and away from home. One might study how these have changed over time and their correlates with demographic characteristics. Because of the increase in the ability to purchase food due to rising average incomes and because of the unchanging constraint of a 24-hour day, changing patterns of food purchases and time inputs into food consumption are especially interesting. Special attention should also be paid to the role of rising income inequality, particularly to the distributional issues involved. Issues of shifting between consuming food at home and eating at restaurants will also be especially interesting.

The special modules of the Current Population Survey allow a researcher to go even further than this. There are enough observations in the ATUS to link to the information on Food Stamps and to the March income data to analyze how different sources of income affect time spent on food and its preparation. Thus, if we view the main purpose of income maintenance as consumption maintenance, combining the ATUS with the March information should allow researchers to infer how well various income maintenance programs are performing this fundamental task. Also, the tremendous size of the ATUS will allow researchers to examine how time spent on food preparation and consumption differs by demographic (particularly age) group, thus shedding some light on the way in which food habits are formed.

A third set of questions involve the context of food-related activities—where they take place and with whom they are conducted. This information is relevant for analyzing eating and food preparation as social activities, and thus for discovering their roles as inputs into child development and even into the creation of social capital.

Work-Family Spillover, Time Use, and Food Choices: Perceptions and Strategies of Low-Income Workers

Long work hours, lack of schedule flexibility and backup, spillover of employment demands into home life, a decline in family meals prepared or eaten at home, and poor nutritional quality of meals typically prepared outside the home make integration of work and family roles a problem with importance for nutrition and health. Work-family strain may be particularly challenging among low- and moderate-income employed parents. Workers' experiences of work-family spillover, including time pressures, activities concurrent with eating, daily patterns of food and beverage consumption, and strategies for managing the negative and positive effects of spillover on food choices were presented. Implications for research on time and food choices were discussed.

Who Has Time to Cook? New Directions for Food and Nutrition Policy Research on Household Meal Production

In a majority of American households, women are principally responsible for meal planning and preparation, despite the dramatic increases in their labor force participation over the last several decades. Is their enough time to meet the demands of both work and home life, in particular, to prepare nutritious meals for the family? This paper outlined new areas of time use research on the meal production process that can inform food and nutrition policy. First we reviewed previous conceptualizations of how time can be included as an important dimension of poverty. Assessment of "time poverty" requires information on minimum time needs for various basic subsistence activities, including food preparation, cleaning, and child care. We then narrowed the focus to food-related activities by illustrating a contradiction in current government policy: welfare policy encourages recipients to work outside the home, but Food Stamp allotments implicitly assume that time is not a constraint to the homemaker. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) is used as the basis for inflation cost adjustments to Food Stamp allotments, yet, to a large extent, the TFP is based on dishes that are prepared from raw ingredients. We assessed the time inputs of suggested recipes for the TFP and compared this with historical time use data on meal preparation in American households. Suggestions are then developed for research in the area of food preparation behavior. New directions for research on food assistance policies that could harmonize competing objectives were also proposed. In recognizing the importance of food preparation knowledge, as well as time, for the production of nutritious meals, the presentation ended with some suggestions for nutrition education programs.

Eating Patterns, Activities, and Obesity

This presentation discussed how researchers might explore the associations among eating patterns, physical activity, and overweight and obesity among American men and women. Types of issues that were addressed included meal preparation and eating out, the timing and length of mealtimes, and participation in physical activities. Physical activities may include both exercise regimes and the proportion of time spent in sedentary versus active pursuits during a normal day. Gender, age, number of children, partner availability, and employment were also considered.