Comparability of dietary patterns assessed by multiple dietary assessment methods: results from the 1946 British Cohort

Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate the consistency of dietary patterns assessed through the use of a dietary recall and a 5-day food diary. Design: Participants (n=2265) of a longitudinal study of health and development completed 48-h dietary recall at interview, followed by a 5-day food diary and with the 24 h immediately preceding the interview analysed separately as a 24-h recall. Mean intakes of foods and nutrients were calculated and dietary patterns were assessed using exploratory factor analysis, using the method of principal components. Paired t-tests and correlation coefficients were used to compare the three dietary assessment methods. Results: Five distinct dietary patterns were identified using the food diary and the 48-h recall but were less consistent on the 24-h recall.  Correlations between factor scores on the 48-h recall and the food diary (r=0.13–0.67) were higher than those between the 24-h recall and food diary (r=-0.01–0.59). The recall methods were effective at ranking subjects according to food and nutrient intakes, with the 48-h recall and food diary showing higher correlations in both males and females. Conclusions: This study indicates that a 48-h recall effectively characterises dietary patterns in British adults when compared to a food diary and ranks participants appropriately with respect to most nutrients and foods and is superior to a single 24-h recall. These results have implications for longitudinal studies where maximising response rates to repeat dietary assessment tools is essential.

Supplement use is associated with health status and health-related behaviors in the 1946 British birth cohort.

Use of dietary supplements may be one of a number of health-related behaviors that cluster together. The current study investigated the underlying diet, health-related characteristics, and behaviors of users and nonusers of dietary supplements in a longitudinal study of health. Participants (n = 1776) completed a 5-d food diary including information on dietary supplement use (vitamins, minerals, and nutraceuticals) at age 53 y. Sociodemographic information and data on smoking, alcohol, and physical activity were obtained along with anthropometric measurements, blood pressure, and a blood sample (nonfasting subjects). A significantly greater percentage of women reported supplement use compared with men (45.1 vs. 25.2%). Supplement use was associated with lower BMI, lower waist circumference, higher plasma folate and plasma vitamin B-12 concentrations, nonsmoking, participation in physical activity, and nonmanual social class in women and with plasma folate concentrations and participation in physical activity in men. Nonsupplement users tended to be nonconsumers of breakfast cereals, fruit, fruit juice, yogurt, oily fish, and olive oil and had lower dietary intakes of potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, and vitamin C even after adjustment for sociodemographic and behavioral factors. Overall, supplement users tended to differ from nonsupplement users on a range of health-related behaviors and health status indicators, although there were fewer significant associations in men. Similarly, dietary supplements users tended to have underlying diets that, were healthier and those taking supplements may be the least likely to need them. These results support the notion of a clustering of healthy behaviors and cardiovascular risk factors, particularly for women.

Threats, fear, politics and the shaping of insecurity 1946-1955

Governments use fear to promote political objectives. Through the exaggeration of external threats, fear as conceptualised in the writings of Hobbes, Barry Buzan, David Campbell and others, became a major factor in shaping Australia's post-war foreign and defence policies which were also intended to serve the government's domestic political agenda.

The history and development of trotting in Victoria to 1946

This thesis sought to explain the development of a code that has been under-represented in Victoria's sporting history. The pioneers of trotting built a foundation of experience, skills and bloodlines that was able to be built upon when the sport re-emerged from the control of John Wren in 1946.

Dora Lynnell Wilson (1883-1946) : a life in art

This thesis fills out Wilson's previously unresearched biography and argues for a reassessment of her standing as an important inter-war artist in Melbourne. The role of cultural gatekeepers in building and deconstructing artistic reputation is discussed, with examples of Wilson's art and an inaugural Catalogue of her known works.

Serving the community : a biography of two primary teachers in rural Victoria 1922-1970

This biographical history investigates the formative influences, motivations and professional lives of wife and husband Ellen Cahalane Jennings (nee Murray) and Joseph Kevin Jennings in the context of their career as employees of the Victorian Education Department.

Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)

Pierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). His work has been widely influential in classical studies and on thinkers, including Michel Foucault. According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits, and upbringing. To cultivate philosophical discourse or writing without connection to such a transformed ethical comportment was, for the ancients, to be as a rhetorician or a sophist, not a philosopher. However, according to Hadot, with the advent of the Christian era and the eventual outlawing, in 529 C.E., of the ancient philosophical schools, philosophy conceived of as a bios largely disappeared from the West. Its spiritual practices were integrated into, and adapted by, forms of Christian monasticism. The philosophers’ dialectical techniques and metaphysical views were integrated into, and subordinated, first to revealed theology and then, later, to the modern natural sciences. However, Hadot maintained that the conception of philosophy as a bios has never completely disappeared from the West, resurfacing in Montaigne, Rousseau, Goethe, Thoreau, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, and even in the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger.

Hadot’s conception of ancient philosophy and his historical narrative of its disappearance in the West have provoked both praise and criticism. Hadot received a host of letters from students around the world telling him that his works had changed their lives, perhaps the most fitting tribute given the nature of Hadot’s meta-philosophical claims. Unlike many of his European contemporaries, Hadot’s work is characterized by lucid, restrained prose; clarity of argument; the near-complete absence of recondite jargon; and a gentle, if sometimes self-depreciating, humor. While Hadot was an admirer of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and committed to a kind of philosophical recasting of the history of Western ideas, Hadot’s work lacks any eschatological sense of the end of philosophy, humanism, or the West. Late in life, Hadot would report that this was because he was animated by the sense that philosophy, as conceived and practiced in the ancient schools, remains possible for men and women of his era: “from 1970 on, I have felt very strongly that it was Epicureanism and Stoicism which could nourish the spiritual life of men and women of our times, as well as my own” (PWL 280).