Publications by authors named "Elske Brouwer-Brolsma"

Studies exploring human milk are often hindered by laborious and costly conventional sampling, resulting in small sample sizes. Here, we implement a paper-based sampling method, dried milk spots (DMS), as an alternative to increase sampling capacity and frequency, primarily tailored for protein compositional analysis. Uncoated paper was unsuited for DMS, with β-casein recovery at 64 ± 1 % and α-lactalbumin at 85 ± 2 % after storage of 14 days.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study introduces a new smartphone-based 2-hour recall method (2hR) for dietary assessment, aiming to reduce memory bias and respondent burden compared to traditional methods like the FFQ (Food Frequency Questionnaire).
  • Conducted on 215 Dutch adults over four weeks, the study found that 2hRs provided slightly higher energy intake estimates and showed moderate to strong correlations with both FFQ and blood concentration markers of nutrients like carotenoids and n-3 PUFA.
  • Overall, the 2hR method demonstrated good ranking ability for assessing dietary intake and was effective in classifying participants' nutrient and food group consumption similarly to the FFQ and blood analyses.
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Background: Childhood overweight and obesity prevalence steeply increased during recent decades, prompting the development of many digital behavioral dietary interventions (DBDIs). However, a coherent overview is lacking, which is crucial for delineating research in this field.

Objective: This scoping review outlines the landscape of DBDIs for improving dietary behaviors in children and adolescents, including delivery modes, design and development approaches, behavioral theory, and outcomes assessed.

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  • Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is linked to excessive sugar intake, particularly from sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), which raises the risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases.
  • A study analyzed data from over 59,000 participants and found that each additional serving of SSB increased the risk of MetS by 6%, while moderate intake of fruit juices showed a potential protective effect.
  • Results for low/no caloric beverages (LNCB) were inconsistent, indicating that replacing SSB with LNCB or fruit juice did not significantly impact MetS incidence, suggesting further research is needed in this area.
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  • Amino acids in human milk are crucial for infant development, and maternal lifestyle may affect their composition, but it's unclear how maternal dietary intake influences this.
  • This study analyzed data from the Amsterdam Mother's Milk study involving 123 lactating women to investigate the relationship between maternal amino acid intake and their concentration in breast milk during the first month after childbirth.
  • Results indicated some negative and positive associations between maternal intake and specific amino acids in milk, but these findings were less significant after adjusting for multiple tests, suggesting that protein intake may not significantly impact breast milk amino acid composition in affluent settings.
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Diets rich in fruit and vegetables (F&Vs) improve cognitive functioning and reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases in children. Nevertheless, 59% of Dutch children do not meet recommended intake levels. Given the importance of color in children's food choices, the concept of "eat the rainbow" presents a promising approach.

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Introduction: Diet quality indices provide a quick indicator of overall diet and are commonly used in research and surveillance. We developed a Dutch Healthy Diet for pregnant women (DHD-P) index, comprising 22 components aligned with the 2021 Dutch food-based dietary guidelines for pregnant women. Our evaluation focused on assessing its performance and sensitivity to change.

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Context: Exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months after birth provides infants with the best start for life. A review by Bravi et al. summarized the importance of maternal diet as a determinant of human milk composition based on data up to 2015, but evidence on nutrient intake level was limited.

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Background: The prevalence of childhood obesity and comorbidities is rising alarmingly, and diet is an important modifiable determinant. Numerous dietary interventions in children have been developed to reduce childhood obesity and overweight rates, but their long-term effects are unsatisfactory. Stakeholders call for more personalized approaches, which require detailed dietary intake data.

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Background: Studies investigating associations between sweeteners and health yield inconsistent results, possibly due to subjective self-report dietary assessment methods.

Objectives: We compared the performance of a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), multiple 24-h dietary recalls (24hRs), and urinary biomarkers to estimate intake of sugars and low/no-calorie sweeteners (LNCSs).

Methods: Participants (n = 848, age 54 ± 12 y) from a 2-y observational study completed 1 semiquantitative FFQ and ≥ 3 nonconsecutive 24hRs.

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Background: Dietary indices are useful measures to investigate associations between dietary intake and disease development. The Dutch Healthy Diet index 2015 (DHD2015-index), a measure of diet quality, assesses adherence to the 2015 Dutch dietary guidelines. We assessed the DHD2015-index in the Lifelines cohort study, and compared calculations from basic and detailed dietary intake data.

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Goat-milk-based infant formulas (GMFs) are now available in several countries, having been approved by authorities. We systematically evaluated the effects of GMF compared with cow-milk-based formula (CMF) on infant growth and safety parameters. The MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library databases were searched (December 2022) for randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

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Purpose: Results of prospective studies investigating associations between low/no-calorie sweeteners (LNCS) and body weight-related outcomes are inconclusive. We conducted dose-response and theoretical replacement individual patient data meta-analyses using harmonised prospective data to evaluate associations between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption, low/no-calorie sweetened beverage (LNCB) consumption, and changes in body weight and waist circumference.

Methods: Individual participant data were obtained from five European studies, i.

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Article Synopsis
  • High-intensity sweeteners like sucralose and saccharine are increasingly used instead of sugar in foods, but there's a lack of data on how much people are actually exposed to them.
  • Researchers developed a new method to measure both sugars and sweeteners in human urine using a technique called ultra-pressure liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS).
  • The method is reliable and accurate, showing that most sweeteners and sugars can be detected in urine, though proper storage is crucial to maintain sample quality.
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Background: Assessing dietary intake and eating behavior in children is challenging, owing to children's undeveloped food knowledge and perception of portion sizes. Additionally, caregivers cannot always provide complete surrogate information. Consequently, validated dietary behavior assessment methods for children are limited, but technological innovations offer opportunities for the development of new tools.

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Background: Sweetened beverage intake may play a role in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) development, but scientific evidence on their role is limited. This study examined associations between sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), low/no-calorie beverages (LNCB) and fruit juice (FJ) intakes and NAFLD in four European studies.

Methods: Data for 42,024 participants of Lifelines Cohort, NQPlus, PREDIMED-Plus and Alpha Omega Cohort were cross-sectionally analysed.

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The predominant source of alcohol in the diet is alcoholic beverages, including beer, wine, spirits and liquors, sweet wine, and ciders. Self-reported alcohol intakes are likely to be influenced by measurement error, thus affecting the accuracy and precision of currently established epidemiological associations between alcohol itself, alcoholic beverage consumption, and health or disease. Therefore, a more objective assessment of alcohol intake would be very valuable, which may be established through biomarkers of food intake (BFIs).

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Background: Conventional dietary assessment methods are affected by measurement errors. We developed a smartphone-based 2-h recall (2hR) methodology to reduce participant burden and memory-related bias.

Objective: Assessing the validity of the 2hR method against traditional 24-h recalls (24hRs) and objective biomarkers.

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Identification of food intake biomarkers (FIBs) for fermented foods could help improve their dietary assessment and clarify their associations with cardiometabolic health. We aimed to identify novel FIBs for fermented foods in the plasma and urine metabolomes of 246 free-living Dutch adults using nontargeted LC-MS and GC-MS. Furthermore, associations between identified metabolites and several cardiometabolic risk factors were explored.

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Skeletal muscle mitochondrial function is the biggest component of whole-body energy output. Mitochondrial energy production during exercise is impaired in vitamin D-deficient subjects. In cultured myotubes, loss of vitamin D receptor (VDR) function decreases mitochondrial respiration rate and ATP production from oxidative phosphorylation.

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Purpose: Examined associations between sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), low/no-calorie beverages (LNCB), and fruit juice (FJ) consumption and all-cause mortality in Dutch adults.

Methods: Data of 118,707 adults participating (mean age = 45 years; 60% was women) the Lifelines Cohort Study were prospectively analyzed. Dietary intake was assessed using a validated food-frequency questionnaire.

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Unhealthy diets contribute to the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases. Annually, over 11 million deaths worldwide are attributed to dietary risk factors, with the vast majority of deaths resulting from cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) including cardiovascular disease (∼10 million) and type II diabetes (∼339,000). As such, defining diets and dietary patterns that mitigate CMD risk is of great public health importance.

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Purpose: Milk-derived free fatty acids (FFAs) may act as both biomarkers of intake and metabolic effect. In this study we explored associations between different types of dairy consumption, a selection of milk-derived free fatty acids, and cardiometabolic disease (CMD) risk factors.

Methods: Sixty-seven FFAs were quantified in the plasma of 131 free-living Dutch adults (median 60 years) using gas chromatography-flame ionization detector.

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Background/methods: Prospective studies investigating sweet beverages and body weight associations show inconsistent results. Within the SWEET project, we examined prospective dose-response associations of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), low/no-calorie beverages (LNCB), and fruit juice with body weight-related outcomes among 78,286 Dutch adults followed for ~4 years. Baseline intakes were assessed using a validated food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) with 150 ml representing a standard serving.

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