BACKGROUND Around a fifth of children starting school in England are now overweight/obese. There is a paucity of interventions with the aim of obesity prevention in preschool-age children in the UK. Previous research has demonstrated some positive results in changing specific health behaviours, however, positive trends in overall obesity rates are lacking. Preschool settings may provide valuabl...

The role that BMI plays in the association between dietary quality and CVD risk is not known. We aimed to better understand this relationship using statistical methods which correct for sex-specific underreporting of dietary intake. Overall, dietary quality was assessed using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) on data from 9797 non-pregnant adults (aged >20 years) who participated in the National H...

BACKGROUND Few lifestyle interventions have successfully prevented excessive gestational weight gain. Understanding the program processes through which successful interventions achieve outcomes is important for the design of effective programs. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the quantity and quality of participation in a healthy lifestyle intervention on risk of exces...

Aging research has benefited immensely from the application of genetics during the past decade. This success frequently obscures some of the latent difficulties associated with this method. Interpretations of many experiments are overly optimistic. The emerging functional methods spawned by the knowledge of the genome promise a new window on the biological aging process. However, conceptual app...

BACKGROUND Both media use and cancer knowledge have been identified as important predictors of a healthy lifestyle. However, little is known about the interplay between these two variables, and about differences between cancer diagnosed and non-diagnosed consumers of media and knowledge. This study investigated the relationship between media use (television and internet exposure) and lifestyle ...

A variety of forces, internal and external, often impact students who are experiencing life on a college campus; these forces can lead to feelings of increased pressure and stress. To combat the negative effects of stress, faculty and administrators at a mid-size, suburban university collaborated to help students decrease their stress and assist them in attaining and maintaining a healthy lifes...

BACKGROUND Co-occurrence of different behaviors was investigated using the theoretical underpinnings of the Transtheoretical Model, the Theory of Triadic Influence and the concept of Transfer. PURPOSE To investigate relationships between different health behaviors' stages of change, how behaviors group, and whether study participants cluster in terms of their behaviors. METHOD Relationships...

AIM To study long-term effects of dietary patterns on dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS Of 525 subjects randomly selected from population-based cohorts surveyed at midlife, a total of 385 (73%) subjects were re-examined 14 years later in the CAIDE study. A healthy-diet index (range 0-17) was constructed including both healthy and unhealthy dietary components. RESULTS Persons wi...

Rates of overweight children and adolescents are reaching epidemic proportions, nearly tripling over the past 30 years. Many barriers exist to healthy eating and physical activity for children and adolescents, including factors in the school and community environments. It is these modifiable school environmental factors that led to the development of the Nutrition Friendly Schools and Communiti...

It is postulated that knowledge of genotype may be more powerful than other types of personalised information in terms of motivating behaviour change. However, there is also a danger that disclosure of genetic risk may promote a fatalistic attitude and demotivate individuals. The original concept of personalised nutrition (PN) focused on genotype-based tailored dietary advice; however, PN can a...