Nutrition

The “frozen food” generation

“A picture tells us a lot more than words do. It reveals a person’s eating habits, the kind of dishes he or she prepares, portion size and kitchen cleanliness,” says nutritionist Marilyn Manceau, a master’s student at Université de Montréal. In fact, even men, who usually have little to say about food, are more talkative when they are asked to comment on an album of photos they’ve taken themselves.

Together with her thesis director, nutrition professor Marie Marquis, the student had the idea of using this little-used methodology to observe the eating habits of young men living in apartments in Montreal. “Young men are unfortunately a population that is not well studied by nutritionists,” explains the student. “As a result, they’re often not targeted by healthy eating campaigns.”

Yet, she adds, eating habits adopted early in life may lead to serious long-term health problems, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardio-vascular disease and cancer.

Although the data analysis has not been completed, Ms. Manseau has already noted some trends among the study subjects. “Most are accustomed to eating fast food, and it shows,” she comments. “Preparation time is kept to a minimum.” She also notes that this generation seems to have a tremendous appetite for frozen and ready-to-eat food: breaded chicken wings, hamburgers, hot-dogs, ‘ Pogos’ with French fries—all washed down by soft drinks—are the undisputed favourites. But some young men, not necessarily the more educated, appear to be a bit more aware of their eating habits. Those men tend to be more physically active and financially secure.

The research project was financed by the MONET group (Montreal Ottawa New Emerging Team), created by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in the spring of 2003 with a mandate to study the metabolic, genetic, and behavioural determinants of obesity. The group is made up of researchers in nutrition and kinesiology at Université de Montréal and University of Ottawa.

Manceau thinks it might be interesting to do the same experiment with women of the same age in order to compare the eating habits of both sexes. But with 15 interviews and hundreds of photos, the young researcher has her hands full. Marilyn Manceau hopes to submit her supervised master’s thesis by the summer of 2005.