HARO 2014 INSTALLMENT FOUR: Food and Health

Summary: This post reviews the fourth installment of HARO’s survey of homeschool alumni. For the other installments in the series please click on the following links:

1. Installment 1: Background and Summary
2. Installment 2: Demographics
3. Installment 3: Academics and Non-Academics
4. Installment 4: Food and Health
5. Installment 5: Religion
6. Installment 6: Present and Future
7. Installment 7: Sexuality
8. Installment 8: Mental Health
9. Installment 9: Abuse

The fourth installment of HARO’s survey explores the attitudes of respondents’ families towards food and modern medicine.

Respondents were first asked whether their families had ever participated in a fad diet or homesteading activities like home gardening, canning, or home fermentation. About 75% of their families participated in at least one homesteading activity, and about a third of the families had participated in at least one fad diet such as the raw milk diet (15.8%) or the Atkin’s Diet (10.3%). Around 8% of the families were vegetarian or vegan at some point, but almost an equal number (6%) said that their families were opposed to vegetarianism/veganism. Finally, 18.8% of the respondents had not participated in homesteading or fad diets.

Their families generally valued food that was healthy, cheap, homemade, and satiating over foods that were easy, fast, conventional, or organic. A lot of the respondents did not care that much about food choice when growing up, but 18% said that they were actively discouraged from eating food that was different from the food of their families. One theme that emerged from the survey is that food can be a form of power in some homeschooling families. 21% of respondents report that their parents had withheld food or drink as a form of punishment, whereas 15% said that they were forced to eat something they hated as a form of punishment. About 16% of respondents experienced moderate or severe food insecurity.

Now moving on to health, 84% of families felt very positively, positively, or neutrally about mainstream doctors and hospitals. A similar amount, 89% of families, preferred modern medicine to essential oils in case of sickness. About 14% of respondents’ families preferred prayer to medicine. About one third of the respondents (32%) reported that their families were opposed to vaccinations, but over half of that figure said that their parents would make exceptions in some cases.

Appraisal: Studies like Long et al. (2014) and Cardel et al. (2013) suggest that the health of homeschoolers and public schoolers is similar. While homeschoolers eat slightly fewer calories on average, public schoolers are able to get more exercise through recess and physical education. HARO’s survey gives us some more clarification on this issue with its questions about food preferences. It is clear that the Evangelical homeschoolers in their sample preferred homemade meals with some home-grown components over processed foods from the store. This preference for healthy foods (particularly at lunch when public schoolers tend to consume more calories) may explain the slight difference in calories found by Long and Cardel. Also, in the second installment of the HARO survey, physical education was ranked lowly by the respondents. This also supports the claim that there is not a significant difference in the health of homeschoolers and public schools since homeschoolers eat slightly better but exercise less. Finally, the distrust of homeschoolers towards vaccines has been documented in Cordner (2012) and Thorpe et al. (2012). Even though HARO’s sample is not representative of homeschoolers as a whole, it does give a bit of a deeper look at the beliefs that lead to the findings in other studies, and its conclusions are consistent with theirs.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members. For more information about ICHER’s Reviews, please see the «About these Reviews» Section.