The relationship between subjective well-being and food: a qualitative study based on children’s perspectives

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Despite the lack of consensus regarding which life satisfaction domains should be included in the study of children’s subjective well-being (SWB), some domains are frequently considered, such as satisfaction with health. However, some others, such as satisfaction with food, are barely taken into account, despite the impact eating habits have on children’s health and well-being. We adopt a qualitative approach to explore the role food plays in children’s SWB, providing for a more in-depth analysis of children’s perceptions and evaluations on a still insufficiently known domain of life satisfaction.

Method

Sixteen discussion groups were held with 112 Spanish students (10–12 years old) from six schools. The transcripts were analy sed and themes reflecting the key concepts were defined using reflexive thematic analysis.

Results

Five themes emerged from the children’s discourses on the relationship between food and SWB: health, pleasure, emotions, commensality—i.e., eating together—and food-empowerment—thus offering new insights from children’s perspectives.

Conclusion

Almost all of the participants established a relationship between their SWB and their eating behaviour, meaning that, within the challenges facing public health, SWB must be taken into account when promoting healthy eating programmes for children. Also, group discussion is found to be a very powerful tool for exploring topics with subjective connotations among child populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• well-being
• food
• food well-being
• satisfaction with food
• subjective well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Cristina Vaqué-Crusellas

Cristina Vaqué Crusellas is a Lecturer of Health Sciences and Wellbeing Faculty in the University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia. She is part of the Research Group on Methodology, Methods, Models and Outcomes of Health and Social Sciences (Research Lines – Methodology, Methods, Models and Health and Social Outcomes (uvic.cat)). Her research areas are design and evaluation of food education and health promotion, studies on food and wellbeing, and malnutrition in complex chronic situations.

Mònica González-Carrasco

Mònica González is full professor in the University of Girona’s Department of Psychology and co-coordinator of the research team on Childhood, Adolescence, Children’s Rights and Children’s Quality of Life (ERÍDIqv) (http://www.udg.edu/eridiqv). She has conducted research on the following issues: children at risk, adolescence and TICs, subjective well-being, children’s rights and quality of life for young people, the elderly and women, truancy and child and youth participation.

Ferran Casas

Ferran Casas-Aznar: Doctoral Program on Education and Society, Faculty of Education and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, University Andrés Bello, Chile. Ferran Casas is Senior Professor of Social Psychology in the Faculty of Education and Psychology. University of Girona (Spain). He leads ERIDIQV (Research Team of Children’s Rights and their Quality of Life: http://www.udg.edu/eridiqv), at the Research Institute on Quality of Life (IRQV: http://www.udg.edu/irqv). His main topics of research are children’s and adolescents’ well-being and quality of life, children’s rights, adolescents and audiovisual media, and adolescents-parents relationships.