Carolyn J. Lackey

Healthy Eating: Defining the Nutrient Quality of Foods.

Today, many initiatives to promote healthy eating and physical activity focus on changing policy and the environment to improve the health, not only of motivated or high-risk individuals but also the entire population. The escalating rates of overweight/obesity and incidence of diet-related diseases/health conditions will require many interventions to influence change. Those wishing to affect policy and environmental changes are often faced with defining foods and beverages that meet criteria defined as “healthy.”

Development of the NKT—A general nutrition knowledge test for teachers

Abstract This paper describes the development of a 40-item test for assessment of basic nutrition knowledge within the concepts of the 1969 White House Conference. The project staff included experts in nutrition and in educational measurement. This team reviewed existing curriculum materials, developed test specifications, wrote and revised items, ensured content validity, administered tryout tests, conducted item analyses, determined reliability, and constructed the final form of the test. The test discriminates between groups that possess basic knowledge in nutrition and those that do not.

Economic and social factors influencing women's infant feeding decisions in a rural Mexican community.

An investigation of economic family and social factors which influenced selection of infant feeding methods by mothers. The study was carried out using a random sample of mothers with infants aged 2 and under in a rural Mexican town. During interviews information was gathered on the infants feeding history attitudes of the mothers and advice received concerning breast milk and infant health feeding methods used by family and peer females and family economic and living situations. Relationships between these factors and feeding method were investigated. Economic situation family size reported ability to produce breast milk and advice received concerning breast milk were found to be influential but exposure to commercial advertising and womens labor force participation were not. Economics is a major factor in choosing breastfeeding for low income families. Large family size seemed a major determinant to bottlefeed.