Using family-based experiential learning to improve nutrition knowledge, dietary intake, physical activity, and food purchasing behaviors among Northern Virginia Latina WIC participants and their children: A pilot study

Objective: To examine the impact of a family-based nutrition education program on nutrition knowledge, diet, physical activity, and food purchasing behaviors of Latina mothers and children participating in Northern Virginia Women, Infant, Children (WIC) programs. Methods: Surveys were administered to mothers (n=15) using a pre-test/post-test design. The family-based nutrition intervention included 1) Discussion and lecture on food labels, food purchasing, portion sizes, and healthy meals, 2) Experiential learning focused on preparation and storage of low-cost, healthy meals incorporating WIC foods, and 3) A Zumba class and discussion on physical activity. Results: The data revealed improved diet such that mothers reported increased fruit and vegetable consumption, decreased juice consumption among their children. Mothers reported their children were more physically active. Further, mothers prepared more meals at home using raw ingredients. Conclusions: The findings are significant in that they support growing literature of the success of family based interventions. Further, these data show the importance of integrating experiential learning activities such as cooking and physical activity with the more traditional didactic methods. This research was supported the Virginia Department of Health and the HRSA funded Virginia Commonwealth Public Health Training Center

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference