A Foray into Food Writing: A Philosophical Approach to Contemporary Food Movements

For my Honors Project I chose to explore one of my passions, food writing. To accomplish this I did extensive research into several food movements with which I was previously unfamiliar. On the basis of this research I generated short papers that became appendices to my final product. The research grounded subsequent journalistic pieces, which explore intriguing aspects of these food movements but in a prose style and at a scale more appropriate to a general readership

An Evaluation of the Mississippi Recipes for Success Resource From the Perspective of Child Nutrition Directors

The Mississippi Recipes for Success (MRS), A Guide for Child Nutrition Programs provides printed and online resources for child nutrition directors. These resources include recipes and methods to assist directors in effectively implementing United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition standards. The purpose of this study was to investigate if child nutrition directors utilize these resources, as well as assess child nutrition directors’ perceptions of the helpfulness, satisfaction, and importance of the various components of the online and 2014 printed versions of the MRS. Data collection for this study involved an online survey that evaluated directors’ usage of the resources and their perceived helpfulness, importance, and satisfaction. The response rate was 68% (N=100). Means for all of the likert-type scales were above three (out of a 4-point scale). Cronbach’s alphas shohigh internal consistency among items. Overall results indicated high satisfaction with the MRS. Satisfaction remained high among all directors. There were not significant differences in response among directors and size of school districts or the number of years a director worked in child nutrition. MRS is a valuable resource utilized by child nutrition program (CNP) directors implementing USDA nutrition standards. The Mississippi Depart of Education’s Office of Child Nutrition will utilize findings from this study in developing future revisions of MRS resources. The positive ratings by directors of the MRS resource has the potential to serve as a catalyst for future state- and nation-wide initiatives to assist Child Nutrition directors in meeting USDA nutrition standards

DESIGN AND DELIVERY OF ELECTRONIC SERVICES: IMPLICATIONS FOR CUSTOMER VALUE IN ELECTRONIC FOOD RETAILING

Electronic food retailers can satisfy their customers more effectively if they understand how this particular market works. As in other service segments, the emergence of electronic business-to-customer services in the retail food industry poses questions for managers about the design of new food retailing services and the redesign of existing services for delivery through electronic channels. Important topics include characteristics of electronic service offerings, the typical operational configurations used to deliver electronic services, and the ways in which they relate to the effectiveness of electronic service delivery. We address this issue by developing a product-process matrix for understanding and analyzing electronic retailing services in general. We tailor the matrix to food retailing in particular. The product-process matrix allows electronic food retailers to determine in advance what features they need in a web site to serve their chosen market effectively.Consumer/Household Economics, Marketing, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Local food hubs in deprived areas: an 'action pack' for community organisations

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Preparing for Effective Program Dissemination and Implementation: An Analysis of Problems and Proposals for the iCook 4-H Program

While much effort has gone into the creation of obesity prevention programs like iCook 4-H, such programs remain largely under-utilized. The disconnect between research and practice highlights the necessity of dissemination and implementation strategies to ensure programs become adopted into practice. Creating a well-informed systematic approach to implementation will ensure that the iCook 4-H program will be implemented efficaciously and sustainably to improve the health of generations to come. The goal of this research was to implement the pilot dissemination and describe the findings in the context of the Quality Implementation Framework. The objectives were to report outcomes of the iCook 4-H pilot dissemination, identify factors that promoted or inhibited successful dissemination, and provide suggestions QIF-based suggestion for improvement of future iCook 4-H dissemination and implementation. Careful attention to detail was paid in earlier stages of the iCook study while developing the iCook 4-H three-pronged approach of program, process, and fidelity evaluation to be consistent and reliable over time. This system of evaluation generates data on effectiveness of the iCook program (which was adressed in the iCook intervention study). In the context of dissemination and implementation it also illuminates the successes and failures in program packaging and determines if actual program delivery aligns with intended program delivery. Process evaluation results of the iCook 4-H pilot dissemination showed that both youth and adult participants identified the key components (concrete as well as abstract) of the program which is an indicator of efficacy. Program evaluation analysis demonstrated significantly increased scores from pre to post intervention in overall outcome measures (and the majority of youth subscales) 87.44±10.57 to 90.89±6.98 in adults and 180.26±29.74 to 200.10±28.67 in youth. Fidelity evaluations demonstrated that sites maintained high attendance (average of 91%) and participants were highly engaged in sessions (session averages of 3-4 on a 1-4 scale). Through third-party fidelity assessment, leaders were categorized as effective to highly effective (3.3-4 on a 1-4 scale) and were able to cover session materials and meet objectives within or below the intended session duration. Based on this assessment, the resources provided to leaders were deemed sufficient. While novel and well designed, this three-pronged approach to evaluation was not intended to serve as a complete dissemination and implementation (D&I) plan. Significant exploration into dissemination and implementation strategies and frameworks was not completed prior to the pilot dissemination study. By evaluating the iCook 4-H pilot dissemination through the lens of the Quality Implementation Framework, a myriad of potential strategies for improvement of iCook 4-H D&I were discovered. Suggested avenues for improvement of future dissemination and implementation include: creation of a resource/needs/fit assessment, creation of a capacity/readiness assessment, generation of multiple iCook curriculum adaptations, creation of materials for marketing the program to potential champions, generating a system for documenting and sharing effective responses to implementation barriers, development of more extensive training for non-Extension staff leaders and new second-tier staff, determining the ultimate hierarchy of staff members and roles of each level, developing a timeline of steps for new site pre-program preparation, developing a timeline of steps for across-site implementation coordination, establishing mechanisms for timely supportive feedback, providing opportunities for the sharing of experiences and community building between structure levels, and providing opportunities for the celebration of program success. Ultimately, it is up to the iCook 4-H principal investigation team to determine which strategies should be incorporated into future dissemination and implementation efforts to ensure iCook 4-H continues to be implemented and generates a lasting impact on communities as an evidence-based practice

IT infrastructure & microservices authentication

Mestrado IPB-ESTGBIOma - Integrated solutions in BIOeconomy for the Mobilization of the Agrifood chain project is structured in 6 PPS (Products, Processes, and Services) out of which, a part of PPS2 is covered in this work. This work resulted in the second deliverable of PPS2 which is defined as PPS2.A1.E2 - IT infrastructure design and graphical interface conceptual design. BIOma project is in the early stage and this deliverable is a design task of the project. For defining the system architecture, requirements, UML diagrams, physical architecture, and logical architecture have been proposed. The system architecture is based on microservices due to its advantages like scalability and maintainability for bigger projects like BIOma where several sensors are used for big data analysis. Special attention has been devoted to the research and study for the authentication and authorization of users and devices in a microservices architecture. The proposed authentication solution is a result of research made for microservices authentication where it was concluded that using a separate microservice for user authentication is the best solution. FIWARE is an open-source initiative defining a universal set of standards for context data management that facilitates the development of Smart solutions for different domains like Smart Cities, Smart Industry, Smart Agrifood, and Smart Energy. FIWARE’s PEP (Policy Enforcement Point) proxy solution has been proposed in this work for the better management of user’s identities, and client-side certificates have been proposed for authentication of IoT (Internet of Things) devices. The communication between microservices is done through AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol), and between IoT devices and microservices is done through MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) protocol

J Public Health Manag Pract

This article describes lessons learned from implementing sodium-reduction strategies in programs that provide meals to older adults in 2 New York counties, with one county replicating the approaches of the other. The implemented sodium-reduction strategies were product substitutions, recipe modifications, and cooking from scratch. Both counties were able to achieve modest sodium reductions in prepared meals. Lessons learned to implement sodium reduction strategies include the following: (1) identifying partners with shared experience and common goals; (2) engaging experts; (3) understanding the complexity of the meals system for older adults; (4) conducting sodium nutrient analysis; (5) making gradual and voluntary reductions to sodium content; and (6) working toward sustainable sodium reduction.CPL5/Intramural CDC HHS/United StatesU50 DP003064/DP/NCCDPHP CDC HHS/United States2015-09-14T00:00:00Z24322812PMC456855