OBJECTIVE To outline the evolution of school food standards and their implementation and evaluation in each of the four countries of the UK since 2000. DESIGN Review of relevant policies, surveys and evaluations, including country-specific surveys and regional evaluations. SETTING UK: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. SUBJECTS Primary and secondary schools and schoolchildren....

The sixth edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) was released in January 2005, with revised healthy eating recommendations for all adult Americans. We developed the 2005 Dietary Guidelines Adherence Index (DGAI) as a measure of adherence to the key dietary intake recommendations. Eleven index items assess adherence to energy-specific food intake recommendations, and 9 items asses...

4. Humans have adaptive mechanisms for managing fluctuations in nutrient intake. Healthy humans are equipped with a number of adaptive mechanisms that partially protect the body from poor health due to fluctuation in dietary intake. In the context of nutrition, adaptive mechanism act to conserve nutrients when dietary supply is low and to eliminate them when they are present in excessively high...

The term 'optimum nutrition' has evolved from a perceived need to base recommendations for nutrient intakes firmly in the context of function. It follows that 'optimum nutritional status' for individual nutrients should be defined in terms of biochemical or physiological markers having some functional value but also showing an appropriate relationship to nutrient intake. The present short revie...

Maternal malnutrition is common in the developing world and has detrimental effects on both the mother and infant. Pre-pregnancy nutritional status and weight gain during pregnancy are positively related to fetal growth and development. Internationally, there is no agreement on the method of diagnosis or treatment of moderate or severe malnutrition during pregnancy. Establishing clear guideline...

The extension of life span by diet restriction in Drosophila has been argued to occur without limiting calories. Here we directly measure the calories assimilated by flies when maintained on full- and restricted-diets. We find that caloric intake is reduced on all diets that extend life span. Flies on low-yeast diet are long-lived and consume about half the calories of flies on high-yeast diets...

Dietary patterns are sensitive to differences across socio-economic strata or cultural habits and may impact programing of diseases in later life. The purpose of this study was to identify distinct dietary patterns during pregnancy in the Mid-South using factor analysis. Furthermore, we aimed to analyze the differences in the food groups and in macro- and micronutrients among the different food...

BACKGROUND Childhood obesity has become a major public health problem in many countries. To explore the risk factors of overweight in infants and young children might be helpful in developing an early overweight intervention strategy. OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence of overweight and the relationship of parental characteristics and feeding practices to overweight in infants and young child...

OBJECTIVES Individuals with HIV constitute the largest group using cannabinoids for medicinal reasons; yet, no studies have directly compared the tolerability and efficacy of smoked marijuana and oral dronabinol maintenance in HIV-positive marijuana smokers. This placebo-controlled within-subjects study evaluated marijuana and dronabinol across a range of behaviors: eating topography, mood, cog...

We describe the approach taken by the National Children's Study (NCS) to understanding the role of environmental factors in the development of obesity. We review the literature with regard to the two core hypotheses in the NCS that relate to environmental origins of obesity and describe strategies that will be used to test each hypothesis. Although it is clear that obesity in an individual resu...