Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act
December 2024
Background: Placement interventions, characterised by greater availability and more prominent positioning of healthy food products in supermarkets and other food stores, are associated with healthier patterns of purchasing and diet. The WRAPPED intervention study is a natural experiment that aims to evaluate a supermarket placement intervention to improve fruit and vegetable sales, household purchasing and the dietary quality of women and their children. Process evaluation, alongside the evaluation of outcomes, is essential to understand how interventions are implemented, under what circumstances they are effective, and their mechanisms of impact.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: As part of the UK government's obesity strategy, the Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021 were implemented in October 2022 to restrict the prominent placement of products high in fat, sugar, or salt (HFSS) in most retail settings. Local authority (LA) officers have been tasked with enforcement of these regulations. This qualitative study examined the perspectives of LA officers including, trading standards, environmental health, and public health officers to understand enforcement approaches and requirements to optimise business compliance with the regulations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF"Premium" pet foods are often formulated with meat slurries. Meat slurries are believed to be of higher quality than rendered meals, but inadequate research has been performed to test how their inclusion affects palatability, digestibility, or indicators of gastrointestinal health. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to determine how chicken slurry inclusion affected the palatability and apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of dog foods and to assess their effects on the fecal characteristics, metabolites, and microbiota of dogs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Healthy Start (HS) is a government scheme in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that offers a financial payment card and free vitamins to families experiencing low income. Pregnant women and families with children < 4 years can use the HS card to buy fruit, vegetables, cow's milk, infant formula and pulses. HS was fully digitalised in March 2022.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfants born into families experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage follow a high-risk trajectory for obesity and poor health in later life. Differences in early childhood food experiences may be contributing to these inequalities. This study aimed to explore the factors that influence parental decisions on when, how and what food to introduce over the first 18 months of their child's life and identify differences according to families' social position.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Poor diet is a major public health concern. In 2021, 63·8% of adults and 22·2% of reception-age children were either overweight or obese in England. Fiscal interventions have become a popular policy measure to reduce obesity and encourage healthy eating.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFactors from social and food environments can influence the food choices of adolescents in ways not experienced during childhood. Evidence suggests these two environments influence adolescents' food choices independently, but there is limited knowledge of how the interplay between these environments influence adolescents' diets. An enhanced understanding of this interplay surrounding adolescent food choice could aid the development of more nuanced interventions and policies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlcohol consumption is a widespread behaviour that may eventually result in the development of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Alcohol, however, is rarely consumed in pure form but in fruit- or corn-derived preparations, like beer. These preparations add other compounds to the consumption, which may critically modify alcohol intake and AUD risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Previous studies of the UK Biobank have examined intake of single food items and their association with health outcomes. Our aim was to develop a dietary quality score and examine the relationship between this score and markers of cardiometabolic health.
Methods: Principal component analysis was performed on dietary data from UK Biobank participants.
Background: Supermarkets are the primary source of food for many people yet their full potential as a setting to encourage healthy dietary-related behaviours remains underutilised. Sharing the experiences from research groups who have worked with supermarket chains to evaluate strategies that promote healthy eating could improve the efficiency of building such relationships and enhance the design quality of future research studies.
Methods: A collective case study approach was used to synthesise experiences of engaging and sustaining research collaborations with national supermarket chains to test the effectiveness of health-focused in-store interventions.
Adolescence is a period of increased autonomy over decision-making, including food choices, and increased exposure to influences outside the home, including the food environment. This review aims to synthesize the evidence for the influence of community nutrition environments, spatial access to food outlets, and consumer nutrition environments, environments inside food outlets, on adolescent food purchasing and dietary behaviors in high-income countries. Six databases were searched for articles published before January 2023.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The study aim was to examine the relationships between longitudinal dietary trajectories from early pregnancy to 3 years post delivery and adiposity measures in women with obesity.
Methods: The diets of 1208 women with obesity in the UPBEAT (UK Pregnancy Better Eating and Activity Trial) study were assessed using a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) at 15 to 18 weeks' gestation (baseline), 27 to 28 weeks' gestation, and 34 to 36 weeks' gestation, as well as 6 months and 3 years post delivery. Using factor analysis of the baseline FFQ data, four dietary patterns were identified: fruit & vegetable, African/Caribbean, processed, and snacking.
Background: The current food system in England promotes a population diet that is high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS). To address this, the UK government has implemented legislation to restrict the promotion of HFSS products in prominent locations (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: As part of the childhood obesity strategy, the UK Government has introduced regulations to restrict the ways high fat salt and sugar (HFSS) products can be promoted in retail settings from October 2022. This study explored () consumers' views on the likely impact of the UK legislation restricting the placement and promotion of HFSS products on their shopping behaviours and () consumers' beliefs about who is responsible for healthy eating.
Methods: Using a cross-sectional study design, qualitative semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of women who shopped at a discount supermarket.
Objective: To examine energy drink consumption among adolescents in the UK and associations with deprivation and dietary inequalities.
Design: Quantitative dietary and demographic data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) repeated cross-sectional survey were analysed using logistic regression models. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews were analysed using inductive thematic analysis.
There is increasing interest in modelling longitudinal dietary data and classifying individuals into subgroups (latent classes) who follow similar trajectories over time. These trajectories could identify population groups and time points amenable to dietary interventions. This paper aimed to provide a comparison and overview of two latent class methods: group-based trajectory modelling (GBTM) and growth mixture modelling (GMM).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Nemaline myopathies are congenital or acquired muscle disorders that typically present in childhood but can occasionally occur in adults with underlying malignant, infectious or autoimmune disorders. There is a great genetic heterogeneity as well as clinical variability among the disease.
Case Presentation: Here, we present a case of nemaline myopathy in a young woman who was newly diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Sjögren's overlap syndrome complicated by macrophage activation syndrome (MAS).
Background: Previous product placement trials in supermarkets are limited in scope and outcome data collected. This study assessed the effects on store-level sales, household-level purchasing, and dietary behaviours of a healthier supermarket layout.
Methods And Findings: This is a prospective matched controlled cluster trial with 2 intervention components: (i) new fresh fruit and vegetable sections near store entrances (replacing smaller displays at the back) and frozen vegetables repositioned to the entrance aisle, plus (ii) the removal of confectionery from checkouts and aisle ends opposite.
When healthy people are part of an individual's social network, those individuals will have better dietary quality. Little, however, is known about whether social networks for food shopping, including both people and resources (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Small-area estimation models are regularly commissioned by public health bodies to identify areas of greater inequality and target areas for intervention in a range of behaviours and outcomes. Such local modelling has not been completed for diet consumption in England despite diet being an important predictor of health status. The study sets out whether aspects of adult diet can be modelled from previously collected data to define and evaluate area-level interventions to address obesity and ill-health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Numerous environmental factors within supermarkets can influence the healthfulness of food purchases. This research aims to identify the changes in store healthfulness scores and assess the variations by store type and neighborhood deprivation using an adapted Consumer Nutrition Environment tool.
Methods: Between January and May 2019, a total of 104 supermarkets in London were surveyed on 1-3 occasions.