Dietary Behaviors

What are the study aims? To understand more about eating habits and age-appropriate food/drink portion sizes of children aged 6 months-5 years old, and how this affects their growth and dental health. Why is this research important? Healthy diets in early years are important for growth and development. However, clear guidance for parents on what and how much children should eat is missing due to lack of up-to-date information. What will the investigators do? Information will be collected at two time points. At baseline, parents/guardians of children aged 6 months-4 years from Leeds, Doncaster and East London will complete questionnaires about their child's sociodemographic information and food intake. They will be asked to record what their child eats for three separate one-day periods using an online system called 'myfood24'. Parents will also attend one in-person session for measuring their child's length/height, weight, and waist circumference. At follow-up one year later, parents/guardians will complete surveys again, with another in-person session to look at growth and assess dental health. What do the investigators expect to achieve and what happens next? They want to understand how growth and dental health are influenced by nutrient intakes, dietary patterns, and portion sizes for key food groups. They will also identify how much of different foods children should be eating, and whether commercial foods and sweet drinks are relevant. They will explore which dietary factors can support healthier children; and how low intakes of key foods or vitamins/minerals in vulnerable groups could be redressed. The study will provide unique information, allowing for development of recommendations for parents and policy-makers on age-appropriate portions, on achieving good nutrition in UK children and within special dietary groups, and on dietary considerations in caring for children's teeth.

Individuals living in the UK who are from ethnic minority communities have a higher risk of heart disease and strokes than white individuals. This risk arises from the social determinants of health. These include lifestyle factors such as diet, physical activity and smoking. Improving these lifestyle factors in individuals is an essential part of reducing the chances of heart attacks and stroke. Patients may have diets and lifestyles arising from their cultural and religious backgrounds but receive advice which is not aligned to their own customs and experiences. Receiving advice which is not relevant to their own types of diet and lifestyle customs may create difficulties for patients in managing their heart and circulation health. Moreover, the dissonance between advice given and patient-specific relevance may lead to poorer adherence to the recommendations made to manage their condition. This can lead to poorer health outcomes for these patients. In addition, they may be advised to adopt diets and behaviours which are not appropriate to their cultures and may be also difficult to put into practice. This is important because lifestyle advice aligned to a patient's existing diet, behaviours and cultural beliefs leads to improved control of these health conditions. Learning to provide dietary and lifestyle advice relevant to individual patients needs is an important skill for the clinicians caring for them.

This implementation study evaluates two strategies to increase fruit consumption among Swedish students. (1) installing fruit stands in schools and (2) combining fruit stands with a health-awareness campaign. The intervention is implemented in a set of participating schools, each following one of the predefined strategies. Students are asked to use a research app to photograph their meals and snacks during three data-collection periods before, during, and after the intervention. The study collects information on fruit intake, eating patterns, and the number of fruits taken from the stands to assess effectiveness and reduce food waste. The aim is to identify which strategy better supports healthy eating habits in school environments.

The goal of this randomized controlled trial is to determine the feasibility of the FRESH-EATS project in children ages 8-12 and their parents/caregivers residing in low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods. The main questions it aims to answer are: Is the FRESH-EATS intervention feasible to implement and well-received by parent-child dyads? Does the FRESH-EATS multilevel multicomponent intervention improve dietary behaviors of children and their parents/caregivers compared to the comparison group? We hypothesize that this innovative community-derived, multilevel-multicomponent intervention is feasible to implement and has the potential to improve dietary behaviors of participants (children ages 8-12 and their parents/caregivers). Researchers will compare the FRESH-EATS intervention group to the Lagged Intervention Control Group (LICG) to see if the FRESH-EATS intervention leads to better dietary behaviors and health outcomes. Participants in the FRESH-EATS intervention group will: * Attend educational sessions on healthy eating and cooking. * Participate in family workshops that address access to healthy food. * Receive food deliveries and information about local food resources. * Engage in community garden activities.