Robert Hyland

Parental perceptions of weight status in children: the Gateshead Millennium Study

Objectives:To investigate parents’ perceptions of weight status in children and to explore parental understanding of and attitudes to childhood overweight.Design:Questionnaires and focus groups within a longitudinal study.Subjects:536 parents of Gateshead Millennium Study children, of which 27 attended six focus groups.Main outcome measures:Parents’ perception of their childs weight status according to actual weight status as defined by International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF) cutoffs. Focus group outcomes included parental awareness of childhood overweight nationally and parental approaches to identifying overweight children.Results:The sensitivity of parents recognising if their child was overweight was 0.31. Prevalence of child overweight was underestimated: 7.3% of children were perceived as ‘overweight’ or ‘very overweight’ by their parents, 23.7% were identified as overweight or obese using IOTF criteria. 69.3% of parents of overweight or obese children identified their child as being of ‘normal’ weight. During focus groups parents demonstrated an awareness of childhood overweight being a problem nationally but their understanding of how it is defined was limited. Parents used alternative approaches to objective measures when identifying overweight in children such as visual assessments and comparisons with other children. Such approaches relied heavily on extreme and exceptional cases as a reference point. The apparent lack of relevance of childhood overweight to their childs school or own community along with scepticism towards both media messages and clinical measures commonly emerged as grounds for failing to engage with the issue at a personal level.Conclusion:Parents’ ability to identify when their child was overweight according to standard criteria was limited. Parents did not understand, use or trust clinical measures and used alternative approaches primarily reliant on extreme cases. Such approaches underpinned their reasoning for remaining detached from the issue. This study highlights the need to identify methods of improving parental recognition of and engagement with the problem of childhood overweight.

Food shopping and preparation among the 30‐somethings: whose job is it? (The ASH30 study)

Purpose – The paper aims to explore the food shopping and preparation responsibility in a sample of adults, average age 32.5 years.Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 198 adults (81 men and 117 women) who were involved in a longitudinal dietary study self‐completed a questionnaire about their food habits. Chi‐squared analysis explored relationships between variables using SPSS (version 10). Open‐ended responses were analysed in QSR NUD*IST using a content analysis framework.Findings – The majority of respondents were married or co‐habiting (79 per cent), 6 per cent were lone parents, 9 per cent lived alone and the remainder lived with parents and others. Significantly more women than men were responsible for food shopping and preparation (both p<0.001). Within shared households food responsibility was predominately a female dominated area, with a considerably higher proportion of women responsible for food shopping and preparation compared with men. Reasons given for this included aspects of time an...

Do implant-supported dentures facilitate efficacy of eating more healthily?

UNLABELLED Edentulous persons have poor diet quality demonstrating a need for dietary intervention. Implant-supported mandibular overdentures (IODs) have functional advantages over conventional dentures (CD), but whether they enhance the ability to eat more healthily following dietary advice is unknown. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of dietary intervention between IODs and CD patients. METHODS Edentulous adults (28 IOD and 26 CD) received customised dietary advice. The percentage contribution of dietary fats, carbohydrate and protein to energy (kcal) intake, dietary intakes of fibre, fruits, vegetables and antioxidants, and plasma antioxidants were assessed pre- and at 3 and 6 months post-dietary intervention. RESULTS Both groups increased fruit and vegetable intake at 3 and 6 months following dietary intervention but intakes between groups did not differ. The IOD group had reduced % energy from total fat at 3 and 6 months and from saturated fat at 3 months. The CD group had reduced % energy from saturated by 6 months. The IOD group had a significantly lower % energy intake from saturated fat at 3 months and higher intake of non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) compared with the CD group. Both groups showed improvements in serum antioxidant status but the IOD group had significantly higher plasma antioxidant capacity post intervention compared with the CD group. CONCLUSIONS Dietary intervention benefits denture patients. IOD patients showed moderately greater dietary improvements compared with conventional denture patients.

Combining social and nutritional perspectives: from adolescence to adulthood (the ASH30 study)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus specifically on the benefits of using mixed methods to investigate dietary change from adolescence to adulthood exemplified using the findings from the ASH30 longitudinal study. The ASH30 study is a longitudinal dietary survey which provided quantitative evidence of dietary change and investigated factors influencing dietary change from adolescence to adulthood.Design/methodology/approach – Two three‐day food diaries were collected both in 1980 (aged 11‐12 years) and 2000 (aged 31‐32 years) from the same 198 respondents in North East England. In 2,000 questionnaires were used to collect perceptions of, and attributions for, dietary change and open‐ended responses were analysed using content analysis.Findings – The use of mixed methods brings added breadth and depth to the research which cannot be achieved by a single discipline or method. Determining what has influenced change in dietary behaviour from adolescence to adulthood is a complex and multifaceted t...

Parental recognition of overweight in children aged 6–8 years: findings from the Gateshead Millennium Study

To investigate parental recognition of childhood overweight and explore parents’ understanding of and attitudes to adiposity in childhood. Questionnaires and focus groups within a longitudinal birth cohort study. Gateshead, UK. 539 parents of children in the Gateshead Millennium Study, of which 27 attended 6 focus discussion groups. Parental perception of their child’s weight status according to actual weight status as defined by International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF) cut-offs. …

Exploring parental attitudes to childhood overweight and obesity and strategies for prevention in the Gateshead Millennium Study

The high and increasing prevalence of childhood overweight (OW) and obesity (OB) is a global public health concern. Paediatric OW andOB are associated with both medical and psychosocial consequences and as a result there is a need for effective preventive strategies.Family-based interventions offer potential for success in OW and OB prevention