Traditional and Indigenous Fruits and Vegetables for Food System Transformation.

Fruit and vegetable consumption is recommended in numerous food-based dietary guidelines and forms a key recommendation in many international statements related to healthy diets. There are thousands of fruit and vegetable species from which to choose, but despite this abundance from nature, populations in most countries neither produce nor consume the recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables. There is enormous potential to better incorporate the wealth of diverse fruit and vegetable species and varieties into food systems.

Measuring Food Culture: a Tool for Public Health Practice.

Purpose Of Review: Food culture is a ubiquitous aspect of all societies. This review provides an overview of methods for measuring food culture, and emphasizes the importance of these measures not just for description, but also for strengthening public health practice, primarily through the development of better interventions; to monitor and evaluate changes in diet and nutrition; and for the development of strategies for sustainability and dissemination.

Recent Findings: Food culture measurement has enriched public health practice through its use of myriad approaches, including interviews, cultural domain analysis, visual methods, observation, time allocation studies, focus groups and community workshops, household studies, and textual analysis.

Changes in the amount of nutrient of packaged foods and beverages after the initial implementation of the Chilean Law of Food Labelling and Advertising: A nonexperimental prospective study.

Background: In June 2016, the first phase of the Chilean Food Labelling and Advertising Law that mandated front-of-package warning labels and marketing restrictions for unhealthy foods and beverages was implemented. We assess foods and beverages reformulation after this initial implementation.

Methods And Findings: A data set with the 2015 to 2017 nutritional information was developed collecting the information at 2 time periods: preimplementation (T0: January-February 2015 or 2016; n = 4,055) and postimplementation (T1: January-February 2017; n = 3,025).

Participatory Methods to Identify Perceived Healthy and Sustainable Traditional Culinary Preparations across Three Generations of Adults: Results from Chile's Metropolitan Region and Region of La Araucanía.

Traditional diets reflect different cultures and geographical locations, and may provide healthy diet options. In Chile, it is unknown whether traditional culinary preparations are still remembered, let alone consumed. Therefore, we adapted methods to identify traditional culinary preparations for healthy and sustainable dietary interventions.

Anticipatory effects of the implementation of the Chilean Law of Food Labeling and Advertising on food and beverage product reformulation.

This study evaluated the anticipated food and beverage product reformulation by industry before the Chilean Law of Food Labeling and Advertising (Law 20.606) was implemented in June 2016 requiring a front-of-package (FOP) warning label for products high in sodium, total sugars, saturated fats, and/or total energy. Fieldworkers photographed a purposive sample of packaged food and beverage products in February 2015 (n = 5421) and February 2016 (n = 5479) from six different supermarkets in Santiago, Chile.

The Food Supply Prior to the Implementation of the Chilean Law of Food Labeling and Advertising.

This study aimed to evaluate the composition of the food supply ahead of the implementation of the Chilean Law of Food Labeling and Advertising (Law 20.606) in June 2016. The INFORMAS (International Network for Food and Obesity/Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) Research, Monitoring and Action Support) framework for monitoring the composition of the food supply was used.

Implementation Tells Us More Beyond Pooled Estimates: Secondary Analysis of a Multicountry mHealth Trial to Reduce Blood Pressure.

Background: The uptake of an intervention aimed at improving health-related lifestyles may be influenced by the participant's stage of readiness to change behaviors.

Objective: We conducted secondary analysis of the Grupo de Investigación en Salud Móvil en América Latina (GISMAL) trial according to levels of uptake of intervention (dose-response) to explore outcomes by country, in order to verify the consistency of the trial's pooled results, and by each participant's stage of readiness to change a given lifestyle at baseline. The rationale for this secondary analysis is motivated by the original design of the GISMAL study that was independently powered for the primary outcome-blood pressure-for each country.

Photographic Methods for Measuring Packaged Food and Beverage Products in Supermarkets.

The global obesity pandemic and rates of nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) have increased worldwide, especially in the Latin American and Caribbean region. In an attempt to control this obesity epidemic, the Chilean government has established a comprehensive set of regulatory actions, including beverage taxation, warning labels on foods, and marketing restrictions to children. To improve the effectiveness of actions to prevent obesity, a better understanding of the food environment is needed.

Prevalence of child-directed and general audience marketing strategies on the front of beverage packaging: the case of Chile.

Objective: Front-of-package (FOP) marketing strategies of a wide variety of beverages were catalogued to examine the prevalence of each strategy prior to a sweeping Chilean restriction of child-directed marketing aimed at reducing obesity-related disease among Chile's youth.

Design: Photographs of 1005 beverage packages were quantitatively content-analysed to code whether a variety of child-directed, health-oriented and other marketing strategies (e.g.

Effectiveness of an mHealth intervention to improve the cardiometabolic profile of people with prehypertension in low-resource urban settings in Latin America: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Poor diet and physical inactivity strongly affect the growing epidemic of cardiovascular disease worldwide. Mobile phone-based health interventions (mHealth) have been shown to help promote weight loss and increase physical activity and are an attractive approach for health-care systems with limited resources. We aimed to assess whether mHealth with advice for lifestyle improvements would reduce blood pressure, promote weight loss, and improve diet quality and physical activity in individuals with prehypertension living in low-resource urban settings in Latin America.

Reducing Food Loss And Waste While Improving The Public's Health.

An estimated 30 percent of the global food supply is lost or wasted, as is about 40 percent of the US food supply. There are valuable synergies between efforts to reduce food loss and waste and those promoting public health. To demonstrate the potential impact of building upon these synergies, we present an analysis of policies and interventions addressing food loss and waste, food security, food safety, and nutrition.

A novel mobile phone application to assess nutrition environment measures in low- and middle-income countries.

Background: Consumer nutrition environment measures are important to understanding the food environment, which affects individual dietary intake. A nutrition environment measures survey for supermarkets (NEMS-S) has been designed on paper for use in Guatemala. However, a paper survey is not an inconspicuous data collection method.

Design and Multi-Country Validation of Text Messages for an mHealth Intervention for Primary Prevention of Progression to Hypertension in Latin America.

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) has been posited to contribute to the reduction in health gaps and has shown fast and widespread growth in developing countries. This growth demands understanding of, and preparedness for, local cultural contexts.

Objective: To describe the design and validation of text messages (short message service, SMS) that will be used for an mHealth behavioral change intervention to prevent hypertension in three Latin American countries: Argentina, Guatemala, and Peru.

The double burden of malnutrition in indigenous and nonindigenous Guatemalan populations.

Background: As the prevalence of obesity increases in developing countries, the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) has become a public health problem, particularly in countries such as Guatemala with a high concentration of indigenous communities where the prevalence of stunting remains high.

Objective: The aim was to describe and analyze the prevalence of DBM over time (1998-2008) in indigenous and nonindigenous Guatemalan populations.

Design: We used 3 National Maternal and Child Health Surveys conducted in Guatemala between 1998 and 2008 that include anthropometric data from children aged 0-60 mo and women of reproductive age (15-49 y).

Risk assessment models in genetics clinic for array comparative genomic hybridization: Clinical information can be used to predict the likelihood of an abnormal result in patients.

Array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) testing can diagnose chromosomal microdeletions and duplications too small to be detected by conventional cytogenetic techniques. We need to consider which patients are more likely to receive a diagnosis from aCGH testing versus patients that have lower likelihood and may benefit from broader genome wide scanning. We retrospectively reviewed charts of a population of 200 patients, 117 boys and 83 girls, who underwent aCGH testing in Genetics Clinic at Rhode Island hospital between 1 January/2008 and 31 December 2010.

Global gender disparities in obesity: a review.

There is a global obesity pandemic. However, the prevalence of overweight and obesity among men and women varies greatly within and between countries, and overall, more women are obese than men. These gender disparities in overweight and obesity are exacerbated among women in developing countries, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

Obesity and central adiposity in Mexican adults: results from the Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey 2006.

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of overweight, obesity and central adiposity in Mexico, and to explore trends compared to the previous Mexican National Health Survey (ENSA 2000) and to Mexican-Americans.

Material And Methods: The Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey 2006 (ENSANUT 2006) was used to describe overweight, obesity and central adiposity. Trends over time were assessed using the ENSA 2000 and by comparing the ENSANUT 2006 results to those of Mexican-Americans using the United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2000 and 2005-2006.