Perceptions Of African American Women About Their Dietary Habits

Recent years have seen a tremendous growth in scientific knowledge of the relationship between diet and health. This increase in knowledge has infonned dietary recommendations to promote health. It has also started a campaign to educate Americans on more healthful eating habits (Guthrie, Derby and Levy, 1994). American consumers show a high level of awareness of the relationship between their diets and serious diseases such as heart disease and cancer (Derby and Fein, 1995). Public health campaigns, along with growing media attention to diet and health topics have raised awareness among less educated as well as more sophisticated consumers (Ippolito and Matbios, 1996). This study will provide an up-to-date picture of the degree to which three groups of African American women are meeting dietary recommendations. The women in the study will be grouped according to age, income and education. They will complete a survey concerning their dietary habits. This study was designed in hopes that it would contribute to the evolving literature concerning the factors that promote general poor health among African American women. As the literature review will show, there is ample documentation of the health problems faced by the African American community in general and by African American women in particular. Issues regarding health promotion among African American women have not been adequately researched. There have been a number of important studies, many of which will be discussed below. These important studies, which have been undertaken in the past few years, reveal significant gaps in knowledge as far as African American women's health issues. There are also troubling questions raised by the research, such as the following: if, as Randall (1993) suggests, hypertension has different causes for African American women, how do we know that the health promotion regimes that have been shown to work for white and/or male hypertension patients will be as effective for African American women? A few recent research projects (e.g., Sanders, Phillips, 1996; and Nies, Vollman, and Cook, 1999) have attempted to identify correlates of health promotion activities among African American women, but much remains to be learned in this area. These projects represent the first phase in an ongoing research project aimed at adding to existing knowledge about factors influencing the health and fitness of African American women.