Social class and adolescence: Teachers’ perspectives on food habits in secondary education

Abstract

Teenagers as a group are vulnerable to making unhealthy lifestyle choices, specifically with respect to food habits. Education centres are important food environments that affect eating habits and the teaching staff witness teenagers’ habits at first hand during the time that they are in school. This research set out to find the social discourses shared by teaching staff about teenagers’ food environment at educational centres across a range of socio-economic levels in different neighbourhoods of Madrid and Bilbao. The study is based on twelve focus groups carried out with teachers at public and semi-private secondary schools in the two cities. The results reveal teenagers follow unhealthy eating habits regardless of the socio-economic level of the neighbourhood where their school is located or of their families. The age of the adolescents influences how far they are able to choose less healthy foods, as it determines whether they can leave school to buy lunch. Their poor food choices are explained not by a lack of financial means to purchase healthy and expensive foods, but because their palates prefer the flavours of unhealthy and easily consumed foods. As agents of food socialisation, families are viewed as absent and responsible for losing control over their children’s habits with respect to health, and this ends up affecting the school day, as observed by teachers (insufficient sleep, skipping breakfast, dizziness, and loneliness).