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‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment

OBJECTIVE: To explore the perceptions of soldiers participating in a US Army Office of The Surgeon General’s worksite health promotion programme (WHPP) on the local food environment within their campus-style workplace. DESIGN: Focus groups were conducted to evaluate the perceived effectiveness of th...

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Autores principales: Chukwura, Chizoba L, Santo, Theresa Jackson, Waters, Clarice N, Andrews, Anne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cambridge University Press 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751505/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31221240
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1368980019001381
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author Chukwura, Chizoba L
Santo, Theresa Jackson
Waters, Clarice N
Andrews, Anne
author_facet Chukwura, Chizoba L
Santo, Theresa Jackson
Waters, Clarice N
Andrews, Anne
author_sort Chukwura, Chizoba L
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: To explore the perceptions of soldiers participating in a US Army Office of The Surgeon General’s worksite health promotion programme (WHPP) on the local food environment within their campus-style workplace. DESIGN: Focus groups were conducted to evaluate the perceived effectiveness of the WHPP implementation. Further exploration of focus group data through thematic analysis focused on perceived contributions of the military campus-style food environment to soldiers’ nutrition behaviours. SETTING: Three US Army installations located in the continental USA. PARTICIPANTS: Active duty soldiers (n 366) participating in one of the fifty-eight focus groups. RESULTS: Soldiers shared a common belief of self-discipline and personal responsibility as the foothold to nutrition behaviour change. Soldiers described aspects of the military campus-style food environment as factors impeding achievement of optimal nutrition. Collectively, soldiers perceived the proximity and density of fast-food restaurants, lack of healthy alternatives on the installation and the cost of healthy food as inhibitors to choosing healthy foods. Overwhelmingly, soldiers also perceived time constraints as a factor contributing to unhealthy food choices. CONCLUSIONS: Although nutrition behaviour is individually driven, soldiers perceived the military campus-style food environment inhibits healthy decision making. Nutrition programming in military WHPP must integrate food environment changes to improve soldiers’ nutrition behaviour outcomes. Applicable to the military, food choice behaviour studies suggest environmental changes must be appealing to young adults. Considerations for environmental changes should include an increased portion size for healthy options, broadened use of soldiers’ daily food allowances on local produce and increased availability of grab-and-go options.
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spelling pubmed-67515052019-09-25 ‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment Chukwura, Chizoba L Santo, Theresa Jackson Waters, Clarice N Andrews, Anne Public Health Nutr Research Paper OBJECTIVE: To explore the perceptions of soldiers participating in a US Army Office of The Surgeon General’s worksite health promotion programme (WHPP) on the local food environment within their campus-style workplace. DESIGN: Focus groups were conducted to evaluate the perceived effectiveness of the WHPP implementation. Further exploration of focus group data through thematic analysis focused on perceived contributions of the military campus-style food environment to soldiers’ nutrition behaviours. SETTING: Three US Army installations located in the continental USA. PARTICIPANTS: Active duty soldiers (n 366) participating in one of the fifty-eight focus groups. RESULTS: Soldiers shared a common belief of self-discipline and personal responsibility as the foothold to nutrition behaviour change. Soldiers described aspects of the military campus-style food environment as factors impeding achievement of optimal nutrition. Collectively, soldiers perceived the proximity and density of fast-food restaurants, lack of healthy alternatives on the installation and the cost of healthy food as inhibitors to choosing healthy foods. Overwhelmingly, soldiers also perceived time constraints as a factor contributing to unhealthy food choices. CONCLUSIONS: Although nutrition behaviour is individually driven, soldiers perceived the military campus-style food environment inhibits healthy decision making. Nutrition programming in military WHPP must integrate food environment changes to improve soldiers’ nutrition behaviour outcomes. Applicable to the military, food choice behaviour studies suggest environmental changes must be appealing to young adults. Considerations for environmental changes should include an increased portion size for healthy options, broadened use of soldiers’ daily food allowances on local produce and increased availability of grab-and-go options. Cambridge University Press 2019-10 2019-06-21 /pmc/articles/PMC6751505/ /pubmed/31221240 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1368980019001381 Text en © The Authors 2019 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Paper
Chukwura, Chizoba L
Santo, Theresa Jackson
Waters, Clarice N
Andrews, Anne
‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment
title ‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment
title_full ‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment
title_fullStr ‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment
title_full_unstemmed ‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment
title_short ‘Nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment
title_sort ‘nutrition is out of our control’: soldiers’ perceptions of their local food environment
topic Research Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751505/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31221240
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1368980019001381
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