Intragenerational influences in food consumption: The role of siblings

The purpose of this paper is the study of family dynamics regarding food and eating: our objective is to understand how food consumption functions within the family and more specifically between siblings. We lead an ethnography study within family homes. Firstly results indicate similarity between food preferences of parents and children for certain product. However, children tend to have a distinctive food intake of that of their parents for other kinds of products. Second, our results show a bigger influence from elder siblings than parents in food consumption of the youngest. Third, we found that within the family the influence of food consumption is not only unidirectional from parents to children and from older children to youngest one. But the influence is also reciprocal: from children to parents and from the youngest to the older. The paper concludes that a better understanding of food consumption between family member can helps to be more effective in addressing related health problems like obesity. As food consumption is related to inter and intra-generational influences, these interactions have to be incorporated in public and private actions oriented to reduce children obesity prevalence.