Identifying ideal product composition of chocolate-flavored milk using preference mapping.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends cutting down added sugar in processed foods and beverages. There is a growing concern for increased calorie intake from added sugar in flavored milk. To understand how to effectively reduce added sugar in flavored milk, the influence of other nutritional components such as percentage of fat, protein, and salt need to be accounted for as they are the determinants for color, flavor and mouthfeel attributes that ultimately influence consumer liking.

Sugar Reduction in Dairy Food: An Overview with Flavoured Milk as an Example.

Owing to the public health concern associated with the consumption of added sugar, the World Health Organization recommends cutting down sugar in processed foods. Furthermore, due to the growing concern of increased calorie intake from added sugar in sweetened dairy foods, the present review provides an overview of different types and functions of sugar, various sugar reduction strategies, and current trends in the use of sweeteners for sugar reduction in dairy food, taking flavoured milk as a central theme where possible to explore the aforementioned aspects. The strength and uniqueness of this review are that it brings together all the information on the available types of sugar and sugar reduction strategies and explores the current trends that could be applied for reducing sugar in dairy foods without much impact on consumer acceptance.

The affordability of a healthy and sustainable diet: an Australian case study.

Background/aims: EAT-Lancet Commission's Planetary Health Diet proposed a diet that integrates nutrition and sustainability considerations, however its affordability is unknown in many country-specific contexts, including Australia. The aim of this study is to develop a healthy and sustainable food basket modelled on the Planetary Health Diet to determine the affordability of the Planetary Health Diet basket across various socio-economic groups, and compare this affordability with a food basket modelled on the typical current diet, in an Australian setting.

Methods: An Australian-specific Planetary Health Diet basket was developed for a reference household (2 adults and 2 children) modelled on the Planetary Health Diet reference diet, and compared to a previously-developed Typical Australian Diet basket.

Professional and non-professional sources of formula feeding advice for parents in the first six months.

Breastfeeding is beneficial to both the mother and infant, yet many infants are either partially or fully fed with formula milk. Those parents feeding with formula receive less support from professional sources than those breastfeeding and may rely on more non-professional sources for advice, and this contributes to negative emotional experiences such as guilt. This paper explores the sources of advice for formula feeding, factors associated with using professional or non-professional sources and compares these sources with those used for breastfeeding advice.

The Influence of Taste Liking on the Consumption of Nutrient Rich and Nutrient Poor Foods.

Repeated consumption of high-energy nutrient poor foods can lead to undesirable health outcomes such as obesity. Taste plays an important role in food choice, and a better understanding of the links between the taste of foods, individual taste preferences, food choices, and intakes will aid in our understanding of why some people might select and consume unhealthy foods. The present review focuses on three main questions: (1) do nutrient poor and nutrient rich foods significantly differ in taste profile? (2) are humans predisposed toward developing a liking or preference for certain taste profiles? (3) how are individual variations in liking of the basic taste qualities related to long term food intake and adverse health outcomes such as obesity? Results indicated that nutrient poor foods were likely to be sweet, salty and fatty mouthfeel, while the taste profiles of nutrient rich foods were diverse.

A Mixed Methods Study to Explore the Effects of Program Design Elements and Participant Characteristics on Parents' Engagement With an mHealth Program to Promote Healthy Infant Feeding: The Growing Healthy Program.

Mobile health (mHealth) interventions have great potential to promote health. To increase consumer engagement in mHealth interventions it is necessary to address factors that influence the target demographic. The Growing healthy (GH) program is the first obesity prevention program delivered via a smartphone app and website offering evidence-based information on infant feeding from birth until 9 months of age.

Parental feeding practices associated with children's eating and weight: What are parents of toddlers and preschool children doing?

Parental feeding practices are associated with children's eating behaviours and weight, yet current use of such practices lacks detailed description. This limits our understanding of which behaviours to target to promote healthy growth. We explored the frequency with which a range of parental feeding practices occurs in mothers of toddler and preschool children.

Impact of the Growing Healthy mHealth Program on Maternal Feeding Practices, Infant Food Preferences, and Satiety Responsiveness: Quasi-Experimental Study.

Background: Infancy is an important life stage for obesity prevention efforts. Parents' infant feeding practices influence the development of infants' food preferences and eating behaviors and subsequently diet and weight. Mobile health (mHealth) may provide a feasible medium through which to deliver programs to promote healthy infant feeding as it allows low cost and easy access to tailored content.

Infant formula feeding practices associated with rapid weight gain: A systematic review.

Excess or rapid weight gain during the first 2 years of life is associated with an increased risk of later childhood and adult overweight and obesity. When compared with breastfed infants, formula fed infants are more likely to experience excess or rapid weight gain, and this increased risk in formula fed infant populations may be due to a number of different mechanisms. These mechanisms include the nutrient composition of the formula and the way formula is prepared and provided to infants.

Infant formula feeding practices and the role of advice and support: an exploratory qualitative study.

Background: Infant formula feeding practices are an important consideration for obesity prevention. An infant's diet is influential on their later risk of developing overweight or obesity, yet very little is known about infant formula feeding practices. It is plausible that certain modifiable practices may put children at higher risk of developing overweight or obesity, for example how much and how often a baby is fed.

Assessing User Engagement of an mHealth Intervention: Development and Implementation of the Growing Healthy App Engagement Index.

Background: Childhood obesity is an ongoing problem in developed countries that needs targeted prevention in the youngest age groups. Children in socioeconomically disadvantaged families are most at risk. Mobile health (mHealth) interventions offer a potential route to target these families because of its relatively low cost and high reach.

The impact of front-of-pack marketing attributes versus nutrition and health information on parents' food choices.

Front-of-pack attributes have the potential to affect parents' food choices on behalf of their children and form one avenue through which strategies to address the obesogenic environment can be developed. Previous work has focused on the isolated effects of nutrition and health information (e.g.

A qualitative study of the infant feeding beliefs and behaviours of mothers with low educational attainment.

Background: Infancy is an important period for the promotion of healthy eating, diet and weight. However little is known about how best to engage caregivers of infants in healthy eating programs. This is particularly true for caregivers, infants and children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds who experience greater rates of overweight and obesity yet are more challenging to reach in health programs.

Effects of parent and child behaviours on overweight and obesity in infants and young children from disadvantaged backgrounds: systematic review with narrative synthesis.

Background: Despite the crucial need to develop targeted and effective approaches for obesity prevention in children most at risk, the pathways explaining socioeconomic disparity in children's obesity prevalence remain poorly understood.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review of the literature that investigated causes of weight gain in children aged 0-5 years from socioeconomically disadvantaged or Indigenous backgrounds residing in OECD countries. Major electronic databases were searched from inception until December 2015.

Preventing obesity in infants: the Growing healthy feasibility trial protocol.

Introduction: Early childhood is an important period for establishing behaviours that will affect weight gain and health across the life course. Early feeding choices, including breast and/or formula, timing of introduction of solids, physical activity and electronic media use among infants and young children are considered likely determinants of childhood obesity. Parents play a primary role in shaping these behaviours through parental modelling, feeding styles, and the food and physical activity environments provided.

Why don't they like that? And can I do anything about it? The nature and correlates of parents' attributions and self-efficacy beliefs about preschool children's food preferences.

Children's food preferences influence their food intakes, which then have important effects on their health status. Presently little is understood about the aetiology of children's food preferences within families. Parental beliefs are important in many domains of socialisation although their role in the development of children's food preferences has seldom been investigated.

A population-based study of preschoolers' food neophobia and its associations with food preferences.

Objective: This cross-sectional study was designed to investigate the relationships between food preferences, food neophobia, and children's characteristics among a population-based sample of preschoolers.

Design: A parent-report questionnaire.

Setting: Child-care centers, kindergartens, playgroups, day nurseries, and swimming centers.