A qualitative study exploring the dietary gatekeeper's food literacy and barriers to healthy eating in the home environment

Issue addressed: Food literacy has been recognised as a collection of interrelated food skills and knowledge to support healthy dietary outcomes. In the home environment, the dietary gatekeeper is the individual most responsible for food preparation, and therefore, has a significant influence on the family diet. This study explored how the dietary gatekeeper's food literacy skills are used to manage dietary barriers to facilitate healthy eating in the home environment. Methods: Qualitative data were collected from a sample of household dietary gatekeepers with children (n = 17). Participants were also instructed to take photographs of family meals prior to the interview and these were used as interview prompts to gain deeper insights into gatekeeper behaviour. Results: Participants reported the two most significant barriers to healthy eating in households were time pressure and fussy eating. Four strategies were identified that used gatekeepers' food literacy to manage these barriers: breaking up meal tasks; customising meals for family tastes; camouflaging healthy ingredients; and facilitating food choice autonomy. These strategies incorporated interrelated food literacy skills related to the planning, preparation, selection and eating domains. Conclusion: The current findings highlight the dietary gatekeeper's food literacy as an interrelated concept and show how it is operationalised to successfully manage barriers to healthy eating experienced in the home environment. So what?: Future health promotion campaigns must offer tailored communications and interventions that provide resources and support to dietary gatekeepers to foster food literacy and counteract the influence of barriers to healthy eating

Memory Complaint Questionnaire performed poorly as screening tool : validation against psychometric tests and affective measures

Objective: This study examined the internal and external validity of the Memory Complaint Questionnaire (MAC-Q), a brief measureof subjective memory complaint in people with normal cognitive function.Study Design and Setting: The Study of Health Outcomes in Aircraft Maintenance Personnel was a retrospective cohort study investigatingthe association between aircraft fuel tank deseal/reseal activities and health status in Royal Australian Air Force personnel. Crosssectional comparison tests included measures of executive functioning, psychomotor speed, attention/working memory, newlearning/memory, depression, and anxiety. An adjusted regression analysis accounted for confounders including age, dates of posting, rank, education, alcohol use, tobacco use, and affective status.Results: Eight hundred seventy-nine participants completed the MAC-Q. Although the MAC-Q tested as highly reliable and internallyvalid, it was highly associated with affective status and was only associated with Digit Symbol Coding after adjustment for depression/anxiety.Conclusion: The MAC-Q is greatly influenced by affective status but not memory performance. It is probably not useful as a specificscreen of memory complaint for general population research