This pilot study investigated the acceptability of whole grain and legume foods in youths with type 1 diabetes and determined demographic and behavioral factors associated with their acceptability.
Archive for category Nutrition and obesity
This article describes foods offered in school meals and consumed by children at lunch and breakfast, and differences in foods consumed by children who did and did not participate in the school meal programs. Consumption of school meals is positively related to children’s intakes of key food groups at lunch and breakfast. Offering more fresh fruit, whole grains, and a greater variety of vegetables could lead to additional health benefits.
The Institute of Medicine conducted a workshop in June 2008 about community perspectives on childhood obesity prevention. This workshop featured site-leaders and evaluators representing different locally-based childhood obesity prevention programs. This 31 page paper documents their discussion about the challenges and promising approaches for evaluating and acting on complex policy and programmatic interventions to prevent obesity and its health consequences.
A new report by University of Southampton academics emphasises the links between poor diet in mothers and ill-health in their children, and calls for women of childbearing age to be made more aware of the importance of good nutrition.
This study indicate that a higher density of BMI-healthy food outlets was associated with a lower mean BMI, a lower prevalence of overweight adults, and a lower prevalence of obesity. BMI-healthy food outlets are supermarkets, fruit and vegetable markets, and natural food stores.
This exploratory study estimates the relative contribution of increased caloric intake and reduced physical activity to obesity in developed countries. Results show that rising obesity is primarily the result of consuming more calories. Results also indicate that the increase in caloric intake is associated with technological innovations as well as changing sociodemographic factors. This review offers useful insights to future research concerned with the etiology of obesity and suggests that obesity-related policies should focus on encouraging lower caloric intake.
This review by David Katz of 64 relevant papers, of which 21 papers representing 19 distinct studies met quality criteria; half of these were published since 2000. They clearly demonstrated that school-based interventions had significant effects on weight. Thus available research evidence does present a case for school-based interventions. Despite the fact that such evidence is limited to date, the urgency of the obesity and diabetes epidemics cries out for action. Intervention is warranted on the basis of both extant evidence and common sense, with methodologically robust evaluation concomitantly to test our assumptions and verify our intuition.
Environmental and policy interventions may be among the most effective strategies for creating population-wide improvements in eating. This review describes an ecological framework for conceptualizing the many food environments and conditions that influence food choices, with an emphasis on current knowledge regarding the home, child care, school, work site, retail store, and restaurant settings. The need for action to improve health are highlighted.
The scientific literature documents that food marketing to children is (a) massive; (b) expanding in number of venues (product placements, video games, the Internet, cell phones, etc.); (c) composed almost entirely of messages for nutrient-poor, calorie-dense foods; (d) having harmful effects; and (e) increasingly global and hence difficult to regulate by individual countries. The food industry, governmental bodies, and advocacy groups have proposed a variety of plans for altering the marketing landscape. This article reviews existing knowledge of the impact of marketing and addresses the value of various legal, legislative, regulatory, and industry-based approaches to change.
Researchers looked at how the supply of fast food affects the obesity rates of 3 million school children and the weight gain of over 1 million pregnant women. They found that among 9th grade children, a fast food restaurant within a tenth of a mile of a school is associated with at least a 5.2 percent increase in obesity rates.