Contrasts and ambivalences in French parents’ experiences regarding changes in eating and cooking behaviours during the COVID-19 lockdown

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104386Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A diversity of positive and negative food-related changes during the COVID-19 lockdown in France were described.

  • Time played a crucial role in changes in families’ eating and cooking habits.

  • Gender differences and inequalities were revealed.

  • Ambivalences regarding food pleasure were observed.

  • Open-ended questions in an online survey can be useful to gather rich qualitative data from a large sample of respondents.

Abstract

Using open-ended questions, this study explored parents’ experiences regarding changes in their family’s food-related behaviours during the first COVID-19 lockdown in France (March-May 2020). Parents (N = 498, 72% mothers) of children aged 3–12 years described which food-related changes they (1) perceived as positive during the lockdown, (2) perceived as negative, and (3) would like to maintain after the lockdown. A thematic analysis revealed that parents appreciated the choice of more local, fresh foods, the time to prepare food (home-made dishes, new recipes) and cooking and eating together with the family. In contrast, some parents highlighted a burden imposed by the increased food preparation at home. They also described a higher intake of unhealthy, palatable food (or the temptation to do so), and weight concerns. Parents would like to maintain their choice of local, fresh foods, and to continue spending more time together around food but doubt the feasibility after the lockdown. The results revealed many inter- and intra-individual contrasts in parents’ answers. An ambivalent attitude toward food pleasure was demonstrated: the sensory/commensal pleasure of eating versus the concerns about an increased intake of pleasurable food. Additionally, gender differences were observed: mothers perceived the preparation of additional meals, for example, more often as a burden than fathers. This study revealed intimate perceptions of the impact of the lockdown on eating habits in families. They give insight into possible facilitators and barriers (e.g., time) for the adoption of recommended eating and cooking behaviours in families, beyond the pandemic.

Introduction

In 2020, the highly contagious coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, also known as COVID-19, has induced a pandemic. Many countries took measures to avoid the spread of this virus among their inhabitants and to avoid a collapse of hospitals. In France, a first lockdown was imposed from March until May 2020, with a profound impact on people’s habits. Schools, non-food stores and leisure centres were closed, working from home was enforced except for those with essential jobs (e.g., in hospitals, food shops), and leaving your home was only allowed for a limited number of predetermined reasons (e.g., grocery shopping, medical visits, etc.).

Since both adults and children were enforced to take most of their meals at home during the lockdown, this study wanted to explore how this impacted families’ eating, feeding, cooking and food shopping behaviours. The study setup was twofold: there was a quantitative part aiming to map the changes in families’ food-related habits (see Philippe et al., 2021), and a qualitative part aiming to explore how parents experienced these changes. The current article focusses on this second, qualitative part of the study.

Eating behaviours consist mainly of habits, i.e., automatic associations between specific context cues and responses, which are hard to change (Wood & Rünger, 2016). Changes in the environment, such as those induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, could cause changes in people’s habits as they have to engage in a new non-automatic process of decision making (Verplanken & Wood, 2006). Qualitative data could provide insight into the drivers and barriers for certain changes and the perceived impact of these changes on families, even beyond the scope of COVID-19. They could help us to gain insight into the factors that could be useful to consider when promoting healthy eating and feeding behaviours in families. A recent systematic review (Wolstenholme et al., 2020) highlighted the added-value of a qualitative approach for targeting families’ experiences, perceptions and emotions regarding children’s eating behaviours.

Moreover, it is well described in the literature how emotional factors and the family mealtime atmosphere can impact parents’ and children’s eating behaviours. For example, experiencing stress or negative emotions can make people overeat and reach for “comfort foods”, rich in sugar and calories (Michels et al., 2012, Evers et al., 2018, Rodríguez-Martín and Meule, 2015). Hughes and Shewchuk (2012) have observed a negative relationship between positive parent emotions and problems in feeding children fruit and vegetables. Berge et al. (2014) have shown that positive food-related family dynamics at family meals were associated with a reduced risk of childhood overweight. It is therefore interesting to study how parents experienced the COVID-19 lockdown in France and how this was related to changes in their families’ eating behaviours.

Therefore, the present qualitative study aimed to explore which food-related changes parents perceived as positive during the lockdown (1), which changes they perceived as negative (2), and which changes they would like to maintain after the lockdown (3), by using open-ended questions. To our knowledge, no data have been published yet on parents’ personal experiences and emotions related to changes in their families’ eating and feeding habits during the lockdown. They could make a valuable contribution to the COVID-19 literature on changes in the food domain that is currently dominated by quantitative studies.

In addition, at the start of the pandemic, some studies (e.g., Alon et al., 2020 (USA); Andrew et al., 2020 (England); Carlson, Petts, & Pepin, 2020 (USA)) and media coverage (e.g., Ascher, 2020 (England)) discussing the impact of the COVID-19 measures, drew the attention to gender inequalities and divisions within families. They pointed out that women took up more childcare and household work than men during the pandemic, and showed a profound impact on women’s work-life balance. The COVID-19 pandemic also had a major impact on the work life of many adults and possibly also their financial situation (ILO, 2021). Therefore, the secondary goal of the present study was to compare the experiences of parents regarding food-related changes during the lockdown based on their sex (mothers vs. fathers), their work status during the lockdown (working outside the house vs. working from home vs. at home, not working), and their perceived financial situation (comfortable vs. difficult).

Section snippets

Study design

As mentioned previously, this study is part of a mixed-method research project, including a quantitative and qualitative part. An online survey with closed-ended questions (quantitative part) and open-ended questions (qualitative part) was used to obtain data. The quantitative part of the survey aimed to describe possible changes in French families’ eating behaviours and feeding practices during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to the period before the lockdown. The results of this part are

Results

A total of 498 parents with at least one child aged 3–12 years answered the open-ended questions. All departments in France were represented except Corsica and the oversea territories, with most parents living in Île-de France (18.7%), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (13.7%), Grand Est (10.6%) and Hauts-de-France (10.4%). Details about all other parental characteristics are presented in Table 1.

For each of the three open-ended questions, several themes and subthemes emerged from the thematic analysis.

Discussion

The results of this qualitative study provided intimate insight into parents’ positive and negative experiences regarding changes in their family’s eating and feeding habits during the first COVID-19 lockdown in France. Parents also expressed which changes they would like to maintain after the lockdown.

Generally, the thematic analyses revealed changes in eating and feeding habits that are in agreement to those reported in recent quantitative studies and surveys in France and in Europe: for

Conclusion and perspectives

This study revealed intimate perceptions of parents about changes in their families’ eating, cooking and food-shopping habits during the first COVID-19 lockdown in France. The results uncovered positive and negative experiences, and many contrasts and ambivalences. Time was identified by parents as a cornerstone for changes in eating and cooking behaviours, and as a future barrier to maintain the positive changes. The COVID-19 situation and related measures were unseen in France and probably

Authors contributions

KP, SM-P and SI conceptualized the study. KP and SMP conducted all analyses, SI was involved in the final steps of the analyses. KP is first author and wrote a first version of the manuscript, thereafter all authors contributed to editing the manuscript and they all approved the final article.

Funding sources

This work was supported by the European Union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 764985: EDULIA project).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the independent ethical committee Inserm for accepting to review their study protocol in a very limited time span. They also thank the participants for their interest in the study.

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      Childcare or school nutrition programs may be able to build on a similar model during summer or holiday breaks. Further, it is important to acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and exacerbated existing gender inequities in time spent engaged in childcare and domestic housework, such as meal planning and preparation (Collins et al., 2021; Craig & Churchill, 2021; Farré et al., 2022; Fortier, 2020; Philippe et al., 2022). For example, a research study examining French parents' experiences regarding changes in eating and cooking behaviors during the COVID-19 lockdown found that the majority of both mothers' and fathers' interviewed appreciated having more time to plan, prepare and eat meals together, however it was almost exclusively mothers’ who reported a perceived burden related to preparing additional meals and coming up with new recipes during lockdown (Philippe et al., 2022).

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