The impact of bias on developing healthy lifestyles, understanding if personal perspectives impact modeling and recommendations of diet and exercise by educators to their students

Purpose Educators have an ability to imprint healthy behavior in children. Yet, little is known about how a bias by educators might impact imprinting on students. Therefore, we examined if educators’ bias in opinions about diet and exercise influence the manner they are discussed with students. Methods 340 (144 F/196 M) educators from over 14 states (USA) provided responses regarding: personal opinions about and history of following diets or using exercise regimens; perspective on commonly held beliefs regarding diet, exercise, body image and morphology; and who should provide recommendations. Responses were tabulated for average and percentage with subsequent analysis by Pearson correlations or keyword frequencies of responses. Results Almost all (97%) understand social pressures related to body image and need to portray healthy behaviors to students. Bias was evident based on history of recommending or discouraging a specific diet ( r = 0.77) or a dietary supplement ( r = 0.66), recommending exercise they used ( r = 0.89) or discouraging ones not used ( r = 0.65). Most (85%) understand that social and mass media are not reliable sources, yet, relied on the same sources for information that reinforced their opinions. Conclusion Findings indicate (1) portrayal of healthy behaviors to students exist but expressed opinion that families have a greater influence than educators on healthy lifestyles, (2) there appears to be an unawareness of personal bias or expression of implicit bias toward behaviors projected to students, and (3) health/physical education and life science teachers may be able to act as a source of unbiased information to provide resources to a school site to aid in developing healthy lifestyles.