Researcher Finds Social Support is Ingredient in Good Nutrition

Dr. Alex McIntosh, a professor of sociology for the department of sociology and member of the department of recreation, park and tourism sciences-rural sociology program, has been at Texas A&M University for 30 years. He is also a member of the Intercollegiate Faculty of Nutrition. A self-described "sociologist with an interest in nutrition," he has spent those three decades researching how social factors influence nutrition. Most of his work has been done with the elderly and with children, he said. His findings are all pointing in the same direction: The best quality of nutrition is linked to social support systems and friendly, loving relationships. In other words, you may be what you eat, but what you eat and how much depends on who you know. "Food and nutrition is like everything else in life," McIntosh said. "It's affected by who you associate with." In his work with the elderly, McIntosh has found that "having a social network of people for meal companionship and companionship in general leaves the elderly less at risk of nutritional deficiency," he said. "Even the elderly under financial stress, if they had social support of meal-time companionship and free-time companionship, their appetite didn't deteriorate," and neither did their health, he said. At the other end of the age spectrum, children and their nutrition have also been studied by McIntosh and his team. His research seems to show that the more time younger children spend with their fathers, the more likely they are to be overweight or obese. "It's not the amount of time (spent with kids), it's what you're doing with that time," he said. http://agnews.tamu.edu/