A qualitative study of diverse experts' views about barriers and strategies to improve the diets and health of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest federal food assistance program, currently serves 44.7 million Americans with a budget of $75 billion in 2011. This study engaged leading experts for in-depth, semi-structured interviews to explore their opinions concerning the existing challenges and barriers to eating nutritiously in SNAP.

'The worst of the Bangladeshi and the worst of the British': exploring eating patterns and practices among British Bangladeshi adolescents in east London.

Objectives: This article examines how aspects of a specific locality, history and set of practices interact to produce an obesogenic environment. The analysis grid for environments linked to obesity (ANGELO) framework and a biocultural approach are used to examine one obesogenic environment--that experienced by British Bangladeshi adolescents (ages 11-14 years old) in Tower Hamlets, east London. Interdisciplinary literature and methods explore how physical, economic, cultural, and political pressures in school, street, and home micro-environments influence eating patterns and practices.

Potential of an analog scaling device for measuring fullness in children: development and preliminary testing.

Improving children's abilities to recognize when they are full is one strategy to prevent overweight, but currently, there are few validated instruments to assist this process. In the present study, we developed and tested the potential of an analog scaling device for quantifying sensations such as fullness in 4-5 year old children. The device was a picture of a doll with a rectangular stomach over which a sliding bar could be moved to communicate rated fullness levels.