Does school health and home economics education influence adults' food knowledge?

Home economics and health teachers are to be found in many parts of the world. They teach students about food in relation to its nutritional, safety and environmental properties. The effects of such teaching might be expected to be reflected in the food knowledge of adults who have undertaken school education in these areas. This study examined the food knowledge associations of school home economics and health education among Australian adults. Two separate online surveys were conducted nationwide among 2022 (November 2011) and 2146 Australian adults (November-December 2012). True/false and multiple choice questions in both surveys were used to assess nutrition, food safety and environmental knowledge. Knowledge scores were constructed and compared against respondents' experience of school health or home economics education via multiple regression analyses. The results from both studies showed that home economics (and similar) education was associated with higher levels of food knowledge among several age groups. The associations of home economics education with food knowledge differed across several Australian states and recall of home economics themes differed across the age groups. These findings suggest that home economics education may bring about long-lasting learning of food knowledge. Further research is required, however, to confirm the findings and to test the causal influence of home economics education on adults' food knowledge.

The associations of vegetable consumption with food mavenism, personal values, food knowledge and demographic factors

Background: Poor dietary choices, in particular low consumption of fruits and vegetables are associated with the prevalence of diet related diseases. Ways to increase consumption are urgently required. This paper examines the associations of demographic, psychographic and food knowledge variables with reported vegetable consumption. Methods: An online questionnaire was administered in late 2012 to a national sample 2146 Australians who were selected to represent the Australian population in terms of age, sex, education and location of residence. It was divided into sections which assessed food knowledge, food involvement, food mavenism, personal values and personality factors, demographic characteristics and reported consumption of 13 vegetables and the total number of servings of vegetables per day. Principal components analyses of the individual vegetable consumption ratings derived three forms of vegetable consumption scores. These and total serving per day were used as dependent variables in a structural equation model to identify pathways between them and their likely antecedents. Major findings: Three types of vegetable consumption were formed:. Salad vegetables (onion, tomato and lettuce);. Dinner vegetables (carrot, peas and beans); and 'Green' vegetables (cabbage, spinach broccoli and cauliflower). Food mavenism, food knowledge, food involvement and equality-universalist values mediated the relationships between demographics and conscientiousness and the vegetable consumption variables. Conclusions: The three types of vegetable consumption and total servings per day were associated with different antecedent pathways. The mediating roles of food mavenism, food knowledge, food involvement and equality-universalist values may present opportunities for health promotion and the horticultural industry to increase population vegetable intake. Further research is required to test these associations via experimental and longitudinal studies and qualitative investigation of the meaning and place of the three forms of vegetable consumption in people's daily lives is recommended.

Food hygiene knowledge in adolescents and young adults

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to utilise the comprehensive Food Safety Knowledge Instrument to compare food hygiene knowledge across a population of high school and university students in Australia and the UK. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 475 students from secondary schools and universities in Australia and the UK took part in a survey, which included a Food Safety Knowledge Instrument and demographic items. Findings – Food safety knowledge was generally very low. High school students had a mean score of only 38 per cent, while university students just reached a “pass” with a mean of 54 per cent. Demographics accounted for 41 per cent of variance in food knowledge scores. Female gender, being at university rather than high school, and living out of home rather than with parents were associated with greater food knowledge. Residing in Australia rather than the UK and being older were also associated with greater knowledge; however, these findings were subsumed by education group. Socio-economic status was not a significant predictor of food knowledge. Practical implications – Identifying demographic and cultural differences in food knowledge can help to identify at-risk populations to better target in theory and knowledge-based interventions. Originality/value – This study is the first to apply the knowledge instrument in an Australian population. Understanding the baseline knowledge in this population is an important first step at developing effective interventions for food safety.

Food Handling Practices, Knowledge and Beliefs of Families with Young Children Based on the Health Belief Model

Objective: To determine current food handling practices, knowledge and beliefs of primary food handlers with children 10 years old and the relationship between these components. Design: Surveys were developed based on FightBac!™ concepts and the Health Belief Model (HBM) construct. Participants: The majority of participants (n= 503) were females (67%), Caucasians (80%), aged between 30 to 49 years old (83%), had one or two children (83%), prepared meals all or most of the time (76%) and consumed meals away from home three times or less per week (66%). Analysis: Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (rho) (p<0.05 and one-tail) and Chi-square were used to examine frequency and correlations. Results: Few participants reached the food safety objectives of Healthy People 2010 for safe food handling practices (79%). Mixed results were reported for perceived susceptibility. Only half of the participants (53-54%) reported high perceived severity for their children if they contracted food borne illness. Most participants were confident of their food handling practices for their children (91%) and would change their food handling practices if they or their family members previously experienced food poisoning (79%). Participants’ reasons for high self-efficacy were learning from their family and independently acquiring knowledge and skills from the media, internet or job. The three main barriers to safe food handling were insufficient time, lots of distractions and lack of control of the food handling practices of other people in the household. Participants preferred to use food safety information that is easy to understand, has scientific facts, causes feelings of health-threat and has lots of pictures or visuals. Participants demonstrate high levels of knowledge in certain areas of the FightBac!TM concepts but lacked knowledge in other areas. Knowledge and cues to action were most supportive of the HBM construct, while perceived susceptibility was least supportive of the HBM construct. Conclusion: Most participants demonstrate many areas to improve in their food handling practices, knowledge and beliefs. Adviser: Julie A. Albrecht

Impact of a school-based food garden on attitudes and identification skills regarding vegetables and fruit : a 12-month intervention trial

Objective To determine changes in ability to identify specific vegetables and fruits, and attitudes towards vegetables and fruit, associated with the introduction of a school-based food garden. Design A 12-month intervention trial using a historical control (control n 132, intervention n 120), class-based, self-administered questionnaires requiring one-word answers and 3-point Likert scale responses. Setting A state primary school (grades 4 to 7) in a low socio-economic area of Brisbane, Australia. Intervention The introduction of a school-based food garden, including the funding of a teacher coordinator for 11 h/week to facilitate integration of garden activities into the curriculum. Main outcome measures Ability to identify a series of vegetables and fruits, attitudes towards vegetables and fruit. Analysis Frequency distributions for each item were generated and χ2 analyses were used to determine statistical significance. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to detect major trends in data. Results The intervention led to enhanced ability to identify individual vegetables and fruits, greater attention to origins of produce (garden-grown and fresh), changes to perceived consumption of vegetables and fruits, and enhanced confidence in preparing fruit and vegetable snacks, but decreased interest in trying new fruits. Conclusions The introduction of this school-based food garden was associated with skill and attitudinal changes conducive to enhancing vegetable and fruit consumption. The ways in which such changes might impact on dietary behaviours and intake require further analysis.

Food in an Australian primary school curriculum : a critical sociological study

Food is a multidimensional construct. It has social, cultural, economic, psychological, emotional, biological, and political dimensions. It is both a material object and a catalyst for a range of social and cultural action. Richly implicated in the social and cultural milieu, food is a central marker of culture and society. Yet little is known about the messages and knowledges in the school curriculum about food. Popular debates around food in schools are largely connected with biomedical issues of obesity, exercise and nutrition. This is a study of the sociological dimensions of food-related messages, practices and knowledge formations in the primary school curriculum. It uses an exploratory, qualitative case study methodology to identify and examine the food activities of a Year 5 class in a Queensland school. Data was gathered over a twoyear period using observation, documentation and interviews methods. Food was found to be an integral part of the primary school's activity. It had economic, symbolic, pedagogic, and instrumental value. Messages about food were found in the official, enacted and hidden curricular which were framed by a food governance framework of legislation, procedures and norms. In the school studied, food knowledge was commodified as a part of a political economy that centred on an 'eat more' message. Certain foods were privileged over others while myths about energy, fruit, fruit juice and sugar shaped student dispositions, values, norms and action. There was little engagement with the cognitive and behavioural dimensions of food and nutrition. The thesis concludes with recommendations for a whole scale reconsideration of food in schools as curricular content and knowledge.

The impact of personal resources and their goal relevance on satisfaction with food-related life among the elderly.

The study explored how actual resources, perceived levels of different types of resources and goal relevance of these resources affect older people's satisfaction with food-related life using a survey in eight European countries, where 3291 participants above 65 years of age and living in their own homes took part. Satisfaction with food-related life was measured using Satisfaction With Food-related Life (SWFL) scale developed by Grunert, Raats, Dean, Nielsen, Lumbers and The Food in Later Life Team. [(2007). A measure of satisfaction with food-related life. Appetite, 49, 486–493]. Results showed that older people rated the resources that they believed to have plentiful of as being highly relevant to achieve their goals. The individuals who rated the relevance and their level of different resources as high were also more satisfied with their food-related quality of life. Further, satisfaction with food-related life, as was expected, was predicted by income, health measures and living circumstances. However, the study also showed that perceived levels of other resources such as support of family and friends, food knowledge, storage facilities also added to the individuals’ satisfaction with food-related life. In addition, the congruence between perceived level and relevance of a resource was also shown to add to people's satisfaction with food-related life, implying that older people's satisfaction with food-related life depends not only on the level of resources they think they have but also on their goals and how important they think these resources are to achieving their goals.

Automatic Food Intake Assessment Using Camera Phones

Obesity is becoming an epidemic phenomenon in most developed countries. The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended. It is essential to monitor everyday food intake for obesity prevention and management. Existing dietary assessment methods usually require manually recording and recall of food types and portions. Accuracy of the results largely relies on many uncertain factors such as user's memory, food knowledge, and portion estimations. As a result, the accuracy is often compromised. Accurate and convenient dietary assessment methods are still blank and needed in both population and research societies. In this thesis, an automatic food intake assessment method using cameras, inertial measurement units (IMUs) on smart phones was developed to help people foster a healthy life style. With this method, users use their smart phones before and after a meal to capture images or videos around the meal. The smart phone will recognize food items and calculate the volume of the food consumed and provide the results to users. The technical objective is to explore the feasibility of image based food recognition and image based volume estimation. This thesis comprises five publications that address four specific goals of this work: (1) to develop a prototype system with existing methods to review the literature methods, find their drawbacks and explore the feasibility to develop novel methods; (2) based on the prototype system, to investigate new food classification methods to improve the recognition accuracy to a field application level; (3) to design indexing methods for large-scale image database to facilitate the development of new food image recognition and retrieval algorithms; (4) to develop novel convenient and accurate food volume estimation methods using only smart phones with cameras and IMUs. A prototype system was implemented to review existing methods. Image feature detector and descriptor were developed and a nearest neighbor classifier were implemented to classify food items. A reedit card marker method was introduced for metric scale 3D reconstruction and volume calculation. To increase recognition accuracy, novel multi-view food recognition algorithms were developed to recognize regular shape food items. To further increase the accuracy and make the algorithm applicable to arbitrary food items, new food features, new classifiers were designed. The efficiency of the algorithm was increased by means of developing novel image indexing method in large-scale image database. Finally, the volume calculation was enhanced through reducing the marker and introducing IMUs. Sensor fusion technique to combine measurements from cameras and IMUs were explored to infer the metric scale of the 3D model as well as reduce noises from these sensors.

Our Landscape, Ourselves: Integrating Process and Traditional food Principles for Wellbeing + Resilience in the Swinomish Tribal Community

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-08

'Savoir fare': are cooking skills a new morality

There has been a recent surge of interest in cooking skills in a diverse range of fields, such as health, education and public policy. There appears to be an assumption that cooking skills are in decline and that this is having an adverse impact on individual health and well-being, and family wholesomeness. The problematisation of cooking skills is not new, and can be seen in a number of historical developments that have specified particular pedagogies about food and eating. The purpose of this paper is to examine pedagogies on cooking skills and the importance accorded them. The paper draws on Foucault’s work on governmentality. By using examples from the USA, UK and Australia, the paper demonstrates the ways that authoritative discourses on the know how and the know what about food and cooking – called here ‘savoir fare’ – are developed and promulgated. These discourses, and the moral panics in which they are embedded, require individuals to make choices about what to cook and how to cook, and in doing so establish moral pedagogies concerning good and bad cooking. The development of food literacy programmes, which see cooking skills as life skills, further extends the obligations to ‘cook properly’ to wider populations. The emphasis on cooking knowledge and skills has ushered in new forms of government, firstly, through a relationship between expertise and politics which is readily visible through the authority that underpins the need to develop skills in food provisioning and preparation; secondly, through a new pluralisation of ‘social’ technologies which invites a range of private-public interest through, for example, television cooking programmes featuring cooking skills, albeit it set in a particular milieu of entertainment; and lastly, through a new specification of the subject can be seen in the formation of a choosing subject, one which has to problematise food choice in relation to expert advice and guidance. A governmentality focus shows that as discourses develop about what is the correct level of ‘savoir fare’, new discursive subject positions are opened up. Armed with the understanding of what is considered expert-endorsed acceptable food knowledge, subjects judge themselves through self-surveillance. The result is a powerful food and family morality that is both disciplined and disciplinary.

“We eat more than kangaroo tail or dugong you know…” : recent indigenous Australian cookbooks

This paper focuses on a series of cookbooks published by Indigenous Australian groups. These cookbooks are typically produced with government funding, and are developed by nutritionists, dieticians, and health workers in consultation with local communities. They are designed to teach Indigenous Australians to cook healthy, nutritious, low-cost meals. In this paper, Fredericks and Anderson identify the value of these cookbooks as low-cost, public health interventions. However, they note that their value as health interventions has not been tested. Fredericks and Anderson question the value of these cookbooks within the broader context of the health disadvantage faced by Indigenous Australians. They argue that the cookbooks are developed from a Western perspective of health and nutrition that fails to recognise the value of traditional Indigenous foodways. They suggest that incorporating more Indigenous food knowledge and food-related traditions into cookbooks may be one way of improving health among Indigenous peoples and revitalising Indigenous knowledge.

Liking for high fat foods in patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea

Excess weight and obesity are factors that are strongly associated with risk for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA).Weight loss has been associated with improvements in clinical indicators of OSA severity; however, patients’ beliefs about diet change have not been investigated. This study utilized a validated behaviour change model to estimate the relationship between food liking, food intake and indices of OSA severity. Two-hundred and six OSA patients recruited from a Sleep Disorders Clinic completed standardized questionnaires of: a) fat and fibre food intake, food liking, and food knowledge and; b) attitudes and intentions towards fat reduction. OSA severity and body mass index (BMI) were objectively measured using standard clinical guidelines. The relationship between liking for high fat food and OSA severity was tested with hierarchical regression. Gender and BMI explained a significant 20% of the variance in OSA severity, Fibre Liking accounted for an additional 6% (a negative relationship), and Fat Liking accounted for a further 3.6% of variance. Although the majority of individuals (47%) were currently “active” in reducing fat intake, overall the patients’ dietary beliefs and behaviours did not correspond. The independent relationship between OSA severity and liking for high fat foods (and disliking of high fibre foods) may be consistent with a two-way interaction between sleep disruption and food choice. Whilst the majority of OSA patients were intentionally active in changing to a healthy diet, further emphasis on improving healthy eating practices and beliefs in this population is necessary.

Factors influencing eating a varied diet in old age

OBJECTIVE:
To investigate the influences of resources and food-related goals on the variety of food choice among older people.
DESIGN:
A questionnaire-based survey in eight European countries: Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Spain.
SUBJECTS:
Participants (n 3200) were above 65 years of age and living in their own homes. The samples were quota samples, eight groups of fifty in each country, based on gender, age and living circumstances, reflecting the diversity of each of the national populations based on education, income and urbanization of living environment.
RESULTS:
Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that income, health status, access to a car and living arrangement affected the level of dietary variety. The perceived level of different food-related resources impacted the consumption of a varied diet over and above actual resource levels. Food-related goals contributed to variety of food intake that was not accounted for by the amount of material resources possessed or the social and other resources perceived to be possessed.
CONCLUSIONS:
Older people's variety of food intake depended on material resources (e.g. monthly income, access to a car, living arrangement, physical and mental health). However, in addition to these variables, the way older people perceived other resources, such as their level of appetite, their food knowledge, their perception of the distance to the shops, access to high-quality products, having better kitchen facilities, access to good service providers and support from friends and neighbours, all contributed to how varied a diet they ate.

Classification of main meal patterns - a latent class approach

Relatively little examination of the meals that are prepared in households has been conducted, despite their well-defined properties and widespread community interest in their preparation. The purpose of the present study was to identify the patterns of main meal preparation among Australian adult household meal preparers aged 44 years and younger and 45 years and over, and the relationships between these patterns and likely socio-demographic and psychological predictors. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted by Meat and Livestock Australia among a representative sample of people aged 18–65 years in Australia in 2011. A total of 1076 usable questionnaires were obtained, which included categorical information about the main meal dishes that participants had prepared during the previous 6 months along with demographic information, the presence or absence of children at home, confidence in seasonal food knowledge and personal values. Latent class analysis was applied and four types of usage patterns of thirty-three popular dishes were identified for both age groups, namely, high variety, moderate variety, high protein but low beef and low variety. The meal patterns were associated differentially with the covariates between the age groups. For example, younger women were more likely to prepare a high or moderate variety of meals than younger men, while younger people who had higher levels of education were more likely to prepare high-protein but low-beef meals. Moreover, young respondents with higher BMI were less likely to prepare meals with high protein but low beef content. Among the older age group, married people were more likely to prepare a high or moderate variety of meals than people without partners. Older people who held strong universalist values were more likely to prepare a wide variety of meals with high protein but low beef content. For both age groups, people who had children living at home and those with better seasonal food knowledge were more likely to prepare a high variety of dishes. The identification of classes of meal users would enable health communication to be tailored to improve meal patterns. Moreover, the concept of meals may be useful for health promotion, because people may find it easier to change their consumption of meals rather than individual foods.