If your child is a picky eater, there is a good chance that they are also overweight, since many picky eaters only consume foods high in fat or sugar. How can you change their food tastes without a major battle? Nickelodeon has some suggestions.
Archive for category Fruits and vegetables
A recent food study led by the Health Protection Agency in the UK has revealed the presence of salmonella bacteria in a small number of ready-to-eat fresh herb samples.
Perishable Pundit collected lots of details on the process behind getting the school fruit and vegetable schemes in Europe adopted. And the challenges ahead.
This longitudinal study based on 896 Norwegian adolescents conclude that perceived accessibility appears to be the strongest mediator of the relationship between adolescents’ FV intake and their parents’ educational level and income and may therefore be an important target for future interventions that aim to reduce socioeconomic disparities in adolescents’ FV intake.
Karen Lock and Joia de Sa wrote this review of school fruit and vegetable programmes. School schemes are effective at increasing both intake and knowledge. Of the 30 studies included, 70% increased fruits and vegetables (FV) intake, with none decreasing intake. Twenty-three studies had follow-up periods >1 year and provide some evidence that FV schemes can have long-term impacts on consumption. Only one study led to both increased fruit and vegetable intake and reduction in weight.
Participants had to work for points for either snack food or fruit and vegetables. By progressively increasing the “price” of the snack foods (i.e., the amount of work required to obtain extra snack points) the relative value of snack food was determined.
157 ninth-grade students participated. Attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predicted 77% of variance of intention to eat 2.5 cups of vegetables. Factors such as impact of parents and peers, availability of vegetables at home and in school, and making sure that vegetables offered to teens are tasty are important in increasing their intention to eat the recommended amount of vegetables.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, those healthful phytoestrogen nutrients that consumers usually associate with fruits and vegetables also exist in foods of animal origin. This is the first comprehensive study of phytoestrogen content in animal food was published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. (pdf: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf801344x)
Physical Activity and Dietary Environment was assessed with regard to 1) policies, 2) availability, 3) social environment, 4) community collaboration and 5) administrative support. Food environments are related to adolescents’ dietary behaviors and interventions targeting FV consumption should include strategies to increase administrative support and the development of FV-related policies.
During the Summer term 2007 the diet, physical activity and body shape were recorded of 2064 kids aged 9-10 years in 92 schools across the county of Norfolk. Promotion of daily fruit and vegetable intake in this age group is warranted, possibly focusing on children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.