1,628 research outputs found

    Associations between mothers’ perceptions of the cost of fruit and vegetables and children’s diets : Will children pay the price?

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    Background/Objectives: Perceptions that fruit and vegetables are expensive are more common among the socio-economically disadvantaged groups and are linked to poor dietary outcomes. Such perceptions may be exacerbated in countries recently affected by natural disasters, where devastation of fruit and vegetable crops has resulted in increase in prices of fruit and vegetables. Examining the associations of perceptions of fruit and vegetable affordability and children\u27s diets can offer insights into how the high prices of fruit and vegetables might have an impact on the diets of children.Subjects/Methods: We analysed the data from 546 socio-economically disadvantaged mother&ndash;child pairs to assess the relationship between maternal perceptions of fruit and vegetable affordability and the diets of their children.Results: Fruit consumption was lower among children whose mothers felt the cost of fruit was too high. Maternal perceptions of fruit and vegetable affordability were not associated with any other aspect of child\u27s diet.Conclusions: Our results suggest a possible role for maternal perceptions of fruit affordability in children\u27s diet, though further research is warranted.<br /

    Consumption Frequency of Foods Away from Home Linked with Higher Body Mass Index and Lower Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study

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    Introduction. Consumption of foods prepared away from home (FAFH) has grown steadily since the 1970s. We examined the relationship between FAFH and body mass index (BMI) and fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption. Methods. Frequency of FAFH, daily FV intake, height and weight, and sociodemographic data were collected using a telephone survey in 2008-2009. Participants included a representative sample of 2,001 adult men and women (mean age 54±15 years) residing in King County, WA, with an analytical sample of 1,570. Frequency of FAFH was categorized as 0-1, 2–4, or 5+ times per week. BMI was calculated from self-reported height and weight. We examined the relationship between FAFH with FV consumption and BMI using multivariate models. Results. Higher frequency of FAFH was associated with higher BMI, after adjusting for age, income, education, race, smoking, marital status, and physical activity (women: p=0.001; men: p=0.003). There was a negative association between frequency of FAFH and FV consumption. FAFH frequency was significantly (p<0.001) higher among males than females (43.1% versus 54.0% eating out 0-1 meal per week, resp.). Females reported eating significantly (p<0.001) more FV than males. Conclusion. Among adults, higher frequency of FAFH was related to higher BMI and less FV consumption

    Is there a role for vitamin C in preventing osteoporosis and fractures?:A review of the potential underlying mechanisms and current epidemiological evidence

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    Osteoporosis and related fractures are a major global health issue, but there are few preventative strategies. Previously reported associations between higher intakes of fruits and vegetables and skeletal health have been suggested to be partly attributable to vitamin C. To date, there is some evidence for a potential role of vitamin C in osteoporosis and fracture prevention but an overall consensus of published studies has not yet been drawn. The present review aims to provide a summary of the proposed underlying mechanisms of vitamin C on bone and reviews the current evidence in the literature, examining a potential link between vitamin C intake and status with osteoporosis and fractures. The Bradford Hill criteria were used to assess reported associations. Recent animal studies have provided insights into the involvement of vitamin C in osteoclastogenesis and osteoblastogenesis, and its role as a mediator of bone matrix deposition, affecting both the quantity and quality of bone collagen. Observational studies have provided some evidence for this in the general population, showing positive associations between dietary vitamin C intake and supplements and higher bone mineral density or reduced fracture risk. However, previous intervention studies were not sufficiently well designed to evaluate these associations. Epidemiological data are particularly limited for vitamin C status and for fracture risk and good-quality randomised controlled trials are needed to confirm previous epidemiological findings. The present review also highlights that associations between vitamin C and bone health may be non-linear and further research is needed to ascertain optimal intakes for osteoporosis and fracture prevention

    Factors that determine energy compensation: a systematic review of preload studies.

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    Insufficient energy compensation after a preload (meal, snack, or beverage) has been associated with excess energy intake, but experimental studies have used heterogeneous methodologies, making energy compensation difficult to predict. The aim of this systematic review was to analyze the relative contributions of two key variables, preload physical form and intermeal interval (IMI), to differences in energy compensation. Forty-eight publications were included, from which percent energy compensation (%EC) data were extracted for 253 interventions (121 liquid, 69 semisolid, 20 solid, and 43 composite preloads). Energy compensation ranged from -370% (overconsumption, mostly of liquids) to 450% (overcompensation). A meta-regression analysis of studies reporting positive energy compensation showed that IMI (as the predominant factor) together with preload physical form and energy contributed significantly to %EC differences, accounting for 50% of the variance, independently from gender and BMI. Energy compensation was maximized when the preload was in semisolid/solid form and the IMI was 30-120 min. These results may assist in the interpretation of studies assessing the relative efficacy of interventions to enhance satiety, including functional foods and weight management products

    Addiction to Highly Pleasurable Food as a Cause of the Childhood Obesity Epidemic: A Qualitative Internet Study

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    An interactive, open-access website was launched as an overweight intervention for teens and preteens, and was generally unsuccessful. An understanding was needed of the reasons for weight loss failures versus successes in youth using the site. Bulletin board posts, chat room transcripts, and poll responses were prospectively gathered and qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed over a ten-year period. Many respondents, ages 8 to 21, exhibited DSM-IV substance dependence (addiction) criteria when describing their relationship with highly pleasurable foods. Further research is needed on possible addiction to highly pleasurable foods in youth. Incorporating substance dependence methods may improve the success rate in combating the childhood obesity epidemic

    Diet Soda Intake and Risk of Incident Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)*

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    Stereo imaging is an important area of image and video processing, with exploding progress in the last decades. An open issue in this field is the understanding of the conditions under which the straightforward application of a given image processing operator to both the left and right image of a stereo pair preserves the stereoscopic perception. In this paper, we explore this problem with application to artistic imaging and we prove that, unlike other methods, artistic operators based on edge preserving smoothing have this desirable property. We also present a novel multiresolution artistic operator, purposely designed for stereo images, which enhances the perception of three-dimensionality by means of a depth driven local scale control.

    Fat aversion in eating disorders

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    Patients with eating disorders are reported to show an irrational dislike of starchy foods, sometimes described as a "carbohydrate phobia". In the present study, food-related attitudes and self-reported food preferences of women patients with anorexia nervosa (N = 13), anorexia with bulimia (N = 16) and bulimia (N = 14) were mapped using multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedures and compared to those of normal-weight controls (N = 49). Sixteen common food names were rated along 9-point category scales for their nutritional similarity, perceived macronutrient content, caloric density and overall nutritional value. MDS (SINDSCAL) and property fitting (PROFIT) procedures revealed that eating disorder patients associated calories with fat content to a greater extent than did controls, and tended to dislike high-fat foods. In contrast, no differences in perceptions or preferences for carbohydrate foods were observed. Anorectic restrictor patients showed the most rigid attitude structure, expressing preferences only for the lowest calorie and the most nutritious foods. The present multivariate techniques of mapping perceptual space may help to distinguish between diagnostic subgroups in studies of eating disorders.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27344/1/0000369.pd

    Uncovering the nutritional landscape of food

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    Recent progresses in data-driven analysis methods, including network-based approaches, are revolutionizing many classical disciplines. These techniques can also be applied to food and nutrition, which must be studied to design healthy diets. Using nutritional information from over 1,000 raw foods, we systematically evaluated the nutrient composition of each food in regards to satisfying daily nutritional requirements. The nutrient balance of a food was quantified herein as nutritional fitness, using the food's frequency of occurrence in nutritionally adequate food combinations. Nutritional fitness offers prioritization of recommendable foods within a global network of foods, in which foods are connected based on the similarities of their nutrient compositions. We identified a number of key nutrients, such as choline and alpha-linolenic acid, whose levels in foods can critically affect the foods' nutritional fitness. Analogously, pairs of nutrients can have the same effect. In fact, two nutrients can impact the nutritional fitness synergistically, although the individual nutrients alone may not. This result, involving the tendency among nutrients to show correlations in their abundances across foods, implies a hidden layer of complexity when exploring for foods whose balance of nutrients within pairs holistically helps meet nutritional requirements. Interestingly, foods with high nutritional fitness successfully maintain this nutrient balance. This effect expands our scope to a diverse repertoire of nutrient-nutrient correlations, integrated under a common network framework that yields unexpected yet coherent associations between nutrients. Our nutrient-profiling approach combined with a network-based analysis provides a more unbiased, global view of the relationships between foods and nutrients, and can be extended towards nutritional policies, food marketing, and personalized nutrition.Comment: Supplementary material is available at the journal websit
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