The Ecological Model of Health Behaviors: Eating Vegetables

As part of my study of heath this semester, I have started watching the Coursera lecture series Introduction to Global Health Policy, taught by a professor from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.

In the first lecture, the professor introduced the concept of the “ecological model” of health behaviors.  To demonstrate the model, he used the example of the use of insecticide-impregnated bed netting intended to prevent malaria and other mosquito-carried diseases in Africa.

The model involves 5 layers of influence on the eventual outcome of heath related decisions. I decided to try to apply the model to different health behavior: eating vegetables.

1. Individual: I like the taste of vegetables. Apparently, I’ve liked vegetables since I first started eating solid foods. My parents tell stories about how when I was a baby, I would cry and scream while pointing at bowls of steamed broccoli, delayed from serving while the family lit the Shabbat candles with friends.

Some people choose to eat vegetables because they are healthy, but I wouldn’t say that thinking applies to me. Although I don’t choose to eat vegetables because of their “healthiness” per se, I do often decide not to eat junk food because it isn’t healthy.

2. Family: I have always eaten the food my family cooks and grows in our front-yard garden. We eat most of our meals at home as a family. Since my parents have always bought and prepared a lot of vegetables, and then modeled eating them happily, I’ve always eaten lots of vegetables. While both parents stress the importance of a healthy diet of unprocessed whole foods, they serve vegetables mostly because they love to eat them.

3. Community: We live within walking distance to two wonderful Farmers Markets. I live around many vegetarians and other people interested in the politics of food, local food, unprocessed food, organics, etc

4. Institutions: I don’t go to school which I have heard feeds students poorly-prepared vegetables. And we live within walking distance to both a natural foods co-op and a chain natural foods grocery store.

5. Policy & Law: Most things I can think about don’t affect me directly, like the fact that organic farms have regulations, making organic foods more expensive. I have been exposed to national campaigns focusing on healthy eating such as Michelle Obama's Let’s Move as well as national guidelines like the food plate (and formerly, the pyramid).

One of the things I was curious about was where pop-culture would fit into the ecological model. For relatively isolated communities in Africa, this factor might not be relevant. But for us here in the US, I think it is very important. So I have added a sixth category:

6. Society: While it is not something that affects me greatly, because I don’t go to school or have a tv, I know that it is a great influence on many kids my age. That eating vegetables is uncool. While it could fit into community (what people in our community tell us) or that it might fit into institutions since so much of it is corporation and ad based, it could very nicely fit into policy as a social policy. Because of this overlapping nature, maybe it should be its own level of society and pop-culture (at least in America.)