Towards accurate assessment of children's food consumption

A descriptive study of the food habits of elementary school aged children was conducted in an urban southeastern American city. The results suggest that the way in which food consumption data about children is conventionally collected may not accurately reflect consumption patterns necessary to ensure proper analysis. The study documents the large contribution to total food intake of casual eating both inside and outside the home and over which children exert considerable autonomy. This suggests that assessing patterns of food consumption among children in an urban population, whose day offers many opportunities for casual eating, may be more appropriately performed by using selected ethnographic techniques alone or in tandem with more traditional methods.