Implications of gender relations in healthy home food environments.

Home food environments provide opportunities and practices related to food and nutrition and the promotion of healthy eating patterns. Due to gender constructions, women play a key role in these contexts, being historically and culturally associated with food care at home. Race and social class are considered factors that provide different experiences and levels of female agency in home food environments, with special impact on nutrition and health. Based on this, the present study proposes a reflection about the repercussions of relations between gender and home food environments. It also discusses how unfolded interactions between gender, race and economic inequalities affect food organization and care based on aspects that range from purchase and preparation of healthy foods to created consumption patterns. It is concluded that some factors such as unshared household chores, double work shift, overload, difficulty of accessing resources and foods and socioeconomic vulnerability are challenges to be overcome to build fair and healthy home food environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]