Low-Income, Pregnant, African American Women’s Views on Physical Activity and Diet.

Low-income, Pregnant, African American Women’s Views on Physical Activity and Diet.

J Midwifery Womens Health. 2013 Mar 4;
Groth SW, Morrison-Beedy D

Introduction: This research was conducted to gain insight into how low-income, pregnant, African American women viewed physical activity and approached nutrition during pregnancy. Methods: Three focus groups with a total of 26 women were conducted utilizing open-ended questions related to physical activity and diet during pregnancy. Content analysis was used to analyze the verbatim transcripts. Groups were compared and contrasted at the within-group and between-group levels to identify themes. Results: Two themes that related to physical activity during pregnancy were identified: 1) fatigue and low energy dictate activity and 2) motivation to exercise is not there. Three themes were identified that related to diet: 1) despite best intentions, appetite, taste, and cravings drive eating behavior; 2) I’ll decide for myself what to eat; and 3) eating out is a way of life. Discussion: Women reported that being physically active and improving their diets was not easy. Women indicated that their levels of physical activity had decreased since becoming pregnant. Attempts at improving their diets were undermined by frequenting fast food restaurants and cravings for highly dense, palatable foods. Women ceded to the physical aspects of pregnancy, often choosing to ignore the advice of others. A combination of low levels of physical activity and calorie-dense diets increased the risk of excessive gestational weight gain in this sample of women, consequently increasing the risk for weight retention after pregnancy. Health care providers can promote healthy eating and physical activity by building on women’s being “in tune with and listening to” their bodies. They can query women about their beliefs regarding physical activity and diet and offer information to ensure understanding of what contributes to healthy pregnancy outcomes. Intervention can focus on factors such as cravings and what tastes good, suggesting ways to manage pregnancy effects within a healthy diet. HubMed – eating

 

Intrinsic and extrinsic influences on children’s acceptance of new foods.

Physiol Behav. 2013 Feb 28;
Blissett J, Fogel A

The foods that tend to be rejected by children include those which may have greatest importance for later health. This paper reviews some of the intrinsic and extrinsic influences on preschool children’s eating behavior, with particular reference to their acceptance of new foods into their diet. Factors conceptualized as intrinsic to the child in this review include sensory processing, taste perception, neophobia, and temperament. The important extrinsic determinants of children’s food acceptance which are reviewed include parental and peer modeling, the family food environment, infant feeding practices including breastfeeding and age at weaning, concurrent feeding practices including restriction, pressure to eat, prompting and reward, and the taste & energy content of foods. Children’s willingness to accept new foods is influenced by a wide range of factors that likely have individual and also interactive effects on children’s willingness to taste, and then continue to eat, new foods. The literature lacks longitudinal and experimental studies, which will be particularly important in determining interventions most likely to be effective in facilitating children’s acceptance of healthy foods. HubMed – eating

 

Appetitive traits from infancy to adolescence: Using behavioral and neural measures to investigate obesity risk.

Physiol Behav. 2013 Feb 28;
Carnell S, Benson L, Pryor K, Driggin E

We come into the world with enduring predispositions towards food, which interact with environmental factors to influence our eating behaviors and weight trajectories. But our fates are not sealed – by learning more about this process we can identify ways to intervene. To advance this goal this we need to be able to assess appetitive traits such as food cue responsiveness and satiety sensitivity at different developmental stages. Assessment methods might include behavioral measures (e.g. eating behavior tests, psychometric questionnaires), but also biomarkers such as brain responses to food cues measured using fMRI. Evidence from infants, children and adolescents suggests that these indices of appetite differ not only with body weight, but also with familial obesity risk as assessed by parent weight, which reflects both genetic and environmental influences, and may provide a useful predictor of obesity development. Behavioral and neural approaches have great potential to inform each other: examining eating behavior can help us identify meaningful appetitive endophenotypes whose neural bases can be probed, while increasing knowledge of the shared neurobiology underlying appetite, obesity, and related behaviors and disorders may ultimately lead to innovative generalized interventions. Another challenge will be to combine comprehensive behavioral and neural assessments of appetitive traits with measures of relevant genetic and environmental factors within long-term prospective studies. This approach may help to identify the biobehavioral precursors of obesity, and lay the foundations for targeted neurobehavioral interventions that can interrupt the pathway to excess weight. HubMed – eating

 

Eating dark and milk chocolate: a randomized crossover study of effects on appetite and energy intake.

Nutr Diabetes. 2011; 1: e21
Sørensen LB, Astrup A

Objective:To compare the effect of dark and milk chocolate on appetite sensations and energy intake at an ad libitum test meal in healthy, normal-weight men.Subjects/methods:A total of 16 young, healthy, normal-weight men participated in a randomized, crossover study. Test meals were 100?g of either milk (2285?kJ) or dark chocolate (2502?kJ). Visual-analogue scales were used to record appetite sensations before and after the test meal was consumed and subsequently every 30?min for 5?h. An ad libitum meal was served 2?h after the test meal had been consumed.Results:The participants felt more satiated, less hungry, and had lower ratings of prospective food consumption after consumption of the dark chocolate than after the milk chocolate. Ratings of the desire to eat something sweet, fatty or savoury were all lower after consumption of the dark chocolate. Energy intake at the ad libitum meal was 17% lower after consumption of the dark chocolate than after the milk chocolate (P=0.002). If the energy provided by the chocolate is included in the calculation, the energy intake after consumption of the dark chocolate was still 8% lower than after the milk chocolate (P=0.01). The dark chocolate load resulted in an overall energy difference of -584?kJ (95% confidence interval (-1027;-141)) during the test period.Conclusion:In the present study, dark chocolate promotes satiety, lowers the desire to eat something sweet, and suppresses energy intake compared with milk chocolate. HubMed – eating