Publications by authors named "Giles T Hanley-Cook"

Background: Despite national and global commitments to improve nutrition, there are no universally accepted indicators for at-scale monitoring of diets. Several metrics have been proposed and used, but they vary in their comprehensiveness and validity in capturing the properties of healthy diets and, potentially, their interpretability across contexts.

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the cross-context equivalence and agreement of healthy diet metrics.

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Background: Nonquantitative list-based or open 24-h recalls (24-HRs) have been shown to overestimate the prevalence of Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W), as compared with direct quantitative observations. However, the main sources of error are unknown.

Objectives: To assess the measurement agreement of proxy data collection methods for MDD-W, as compared with weighed food records (WFRs).

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Background: Adolescents' diets have been overlooked in nutrition information systems, interventions, and policies. The minimum dietary diversity for women (MDD-W) indicator has been validated to signal greater micronutrient adequacy among nonpregnant women from low- and middle-income countries, but there is limited evidence for valid food group thresholds among boys or nonpregnant nonlactating girls.

Objective: To define a food group threshold that reflects minimum dietary diversity for adolescents.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study validated the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women of Reproductive Age (MDD-W) as a measure of micronutrient adequacy for pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), addressing a gap in research for this specific group.
  • - Researchers analyzed data from 4 LMICs (Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, India, and Nepal) with 4,909 participants to evaluate the relationship between food group diversity (measured by Women's Dietary Diversity Score - WDDS-10) and micronutrient adequacy (MPA).
  • - Results indicated that a threshold of 5 or more food groups significantly predicted adequate micronutrient intake among pregnant women, showing strong sensitivity and specificity, suggesting
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  • Researchers studied how eating a healthy diet (called the EAT-Lancet diet) affects heart health in teens in Europe.
  • They used information from a big study and looked at what the teens usually ate and their heart health scores.
  • The results showed that eating healthier could mean better heart health, like lower chances of high blood pressure and cholesterol.
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Fortified balanced energy-protein (BEP) supplementation is a promising intervention for improving maternal health, birth outcomes and infant growth in low- and middle-income countries. This nested biospecimen sub-study aimed to evaluate the physiological effect of multi-micronutrient-fortified BEP supplementation on pregnant and lactating women and their infants. Pregnant women (15-40 years) received either fortified BEP and iron-folic acid (IFA) (intervention) or IFA only (control) throughout pregnancy.

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Purpose: The EAT-Lancet Commission proposed an evidence-based global reference diet to improve human health within planetary boundaries. Recently, the Planetary Health Diet Index (PHDI) was developed based on the EAT-Lancet recommendations and validated among Brazilian adults. However, the relative validity of the PHDI in adolescents has yet to be assessed.

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  • Aflatoxins, produced by Aspergillus fungi, contaminate food supplies in low- and middle-income countries and may negatively impact fetal growth during pregnancy.
  • This study in rural Ethiopia involved 492 pregnant women tracking aflatoxin exposure and fetal growth, utilizing ultrasound and serum measurements to assess outcomes over time.
  • Results indicated that mothers exposed to aflatoxins experienced significantly lower fetal growth rates compared to unexposed mothers, highlighting a potential health concern for fetal development.
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Background: Panel data indicate that nonpregnant women's dietary diversity fluctuates across climatic seasons in low- and middle-income countries. The natural day-to-day variability in food group consumption during gestation is unknown.

Objectives: A longitudinal study was conducted among pregnant women enrolled in the Micronutriments pour la Santé de la Mère et de l'Enfant study 3 randomized controlled efficacy trial [i.

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Dietary diversity is an established public health principle, and its measurement is essential for studies of diet quality and food security. However, conventional food group scores fail to capture the nutritional variability and ecosystem services delivered by dietary richness and dissimilarity food groups, or the relative distribution (i.e.

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  • Mycotoxin exposure during pregnancy in low- and middle-income countries has been linked to negative birth outcomes, but previous research mainly focused on single mycotoxins and showed inconsistent results.
  • In a study of 579 pregnant women in rural Ethiopia, researchers found that all participants were exposed to multiple mycotoxins, with fumonisins being the most common, but no significant links to adverse birth outcomes were identified.
  • The findings highlight the widespread co-exposure to mycotoxins among pregnant women, suggesting a need for public health policies and interventions to reduce such exposures in the region.
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Background: Food biodiversity, encompassing the variety of plants, animals, and other organisms consumed as food and drink, has intrinsic potential to underpin diverse, nutritious diets and improve Earth system resilience. Dietary species richness (DSR), which is recommended as a crosscutting measure of food biodiversity, has been positively associated with the micronutrient adequacy of diets in women and young children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, the relationships between DSR and major health outcomes have yet to be assessed in any population.

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High cost of nutritious foods and eating out of home (OH) might be barriers to healthy and sustainable diets. We examined adherence to Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), EAT-Lancet reference diet (EAT) and Mediterranean diet score (MDS) and the associations with dietary cost and eating OH. We evaluated cross-sectional data from single multiple-pass 24-h diet recalls from 289 young adults (18-24 years) in Tirana, Albania.

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The EAT-Lancet Commission promulgated a universal reference diet. Subsequently, researchers constructed an EAT-Lancet diet score (0-14 points), with minimum intake values for various dietary components set at 0 g/d, and reported inverse associations with risks of major health outcomes in a high-income population. We assessed associations between EAT-Lancet diet scores, without or with lower bound values, and the mean probability of micronutrient adequacy (MPA) among nutrition-insecure women of reproductive age (WRA) from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).

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Minimum dietary diversity for women of reproductive age (MDD-W) was validated as a population-level proxy of micronutrient adequacy, with indicator data collection proposed as either list-based or open recall. No study has assessed the validity of these two non-quantitative proxy methods against weighed food records (WFR). We assessed the measurement agreement of list-based and open recall methods as compared to WFR (i.

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