the roles of socialization and school environment on the diet dynamics of children

What is it about?

It is aimed in this paper to study the impact of socialization and school environment on the diet dynamics of children and try to explore the value of behaviour-based interventions and policies that account for the sociocultural environments of at risk communities.

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Why is it important?

Mathematical models are used to evaluate the roles of socialisation and school environment on the diet dynamics of children. Data suggest that standard nutrition education programmes may have, at best, minimal impact in altering diet dynamics at the population-level. Inclusion of peer influence (model as contagion) reinforced by the use of culturally-sensitive school menus (environmental disruption) may prove capable of modifying obesity enhancing diet dynamics; altering the diets of a significant (critical) proportion of youngsters. A framework is introduced to explore the value of behaviour-based interventions and policies that account for the sociocultural environments of at risk communities. These models capture carefully choreographed scenarios to account for the fact that when dealing with diet-dynamics systems, thinking additively is not enough as it cannot account for the power of nonlinear effects.

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