Designing the eatwell week: the application of eatwell plate advice to weekly food intake

<p>To develop a menu and resource to illustrate to consumers and health professionals what a healthy balanced diet looks like over the course of a week.</p> <p>Development and analysis of an illustrative 7 d ‘eatwell week’ menu to meet current UK recommendations for nutrients with a Dietary Reference Value, with a daily energy base of 8368 kJ (2000 kcal). Foods were selected using market research data on meals and snacks commonly consumed by UK adults. Analysis used the food composition data set from year 1 (2008) of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey rolling programme. The eatwell week menu was developed using an iterative process of nutritional analysis with adjustments made to portion sizes and the inclusion/exclusion of foods in order to achieve the target macronutrient composition.</p> <p>Three main meals and two snacks were presented as interchangeable within the weekdays and two weekend days to achieve adult food and nutrient recommendations. Main meals were based on potatoes, rice or pasta with fish (two meals; one oily), red meat (two meals), poultry or vegetarian accompaniments. The 5-a-day target for fruit and vegetables (range 5–6·7 portions) was achieved daily. Mean salt content was below recommended maximum levels (<6 g/d). All key macro- and micronutrient values were achieved.</p> <p>Affordable foods, and those widely consumed by British adults, can be incorporated within a 7 d healthy balanced menu. Future research should investigate the effect of using the eatwell week on adults’ dietary habits and health-related outcomes.</p&gt

Eating for the Environment: The Potential of Dietary Guidelines to Achieve Better Human and Environmental Health Outcomes

Agriculture and food production contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution. Shifting human dietary patterns has the potential to reduce such environmental harms while also promoting human health. Government policy, in the form of the United States Dietary Guidelines (USDG), recommends what Americans should eat and could play an important role in shifting the food system to one that is more sustainable. However, the USDG are an overlooked aspect of U.S. food policy. While many countries have moved to synthesize environmental goals with dietary guidance, the United States has taken the opposite approach. In 2015, despite recommendations from the expert panel appointed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee), which recommended including sustainability considerations in the 2015 USDG, the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Agriculture rejected those recommendations reasoning that the sustainability perspective was beyond the scope of the USDG-enabling statute. This Article examines why that decision was wrong and how, based on international examples and sound science, the federal government should see the USDG as a powerful food system policy tool that can be used to promote human and environmental health in the 21st century

The Cholesterol Factor: Balancing Accuracy and Health in Recipe Recommendation Through a Nutrient-Specific Metric

Whereas many food recommender systems optimize for users’ preferences, health is another but often overlooked objective. This paper aims to recommend relevant recipes that avoid nutrients that contribute to high levels of cholesterol, such as saturated fat and sugar. We introduce a novel metric called ‘The Cholesterol Factor’, based on nutritional guidelines from the Norwegian Directorate of Health, that can balance accuracy and health through linear re-weighting in post-filtering. We tested popular recommender approaches by evaluating a recipe dataset from AllRecipes.com, in which a CF-based SVD method outperformed content-based and hybrid methods. Although we found that increasing the healthiness of a recommended recipe set came at the cost of Precision and Recall metrics, only putting little weight (10-15%) on our Cholesterol Factor can significantly improve the healthiness of a recommendation set with minimal accuracy losses.publishedVersio

Reproducibility and validity of a diet quality index for children assessed using a FFQ

The diet quality index (DQI) for preschool children is a new index developed to reflect compliance with four main food-based dietary guidelines for preschool children in Flanders. The present study investigates: (1) the validity of this index by comparing DQI scores for preschool children with nutrient intakes, both of which were derived from 3d estimated diet records; (2) the reproducibility of the DQI for preschoolers based on a parentally reported forty-seven-item FFQ DQI, which was repeated after 5 weeks; (3) the relative validity of the FFQ DQI with 3d record DQI scores as reference. The study sample included 510 and 58 preschoolers (2-5-6.5 years) for validity and reproducibility analyses, respectively. Increasing 3d record DQI scores were associated with decreasing consumption of added sugars, and increasing intakes of fibre, water, Ca and many micronutrients. Mean FFQ DQI test-retest scores were not significantly different: 72 (so 11) v. 71 (Si) 10) (P-=0-218) out of a maximum of 100. Mean 3d record DQI score (66 (so 10)) was significantly lower than mean FFQ DQI (71 (so 10); P<0.001). The reproducibility correlation was 0.88. Pearsons correlation (adjusted for within-person variability) between FFQ and 3d record DQI scores was 0.82. Cross-classification analysis of the FFQ and 3d record DQI classified 60% of the subjects in the same category and 3% in extreme tertiles. Cross-classification of repeated administrations classified 62% of the subjects in the same category and 3% in extreme categories. The FFQ-based DQI approach compared well with the 3d record approach, and it can be used to determine diet quality among preschoolers