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The purpose of this paper is to assess the Questionnaire Eating Behaviours (QEB), developed by the Science Committee of Human Nutrition of the Polish Academy of Sciences, as an instrument to examine the opinions on food and nutrition and diet quality indicators in women in various age groups.

The study involved 161 healthy Polish women aged 18–92, divided into four age groups to assess the QEB questionnaire, as an instrument to examine the opinions on food and nutrition and diet quality indicators.

Women provided statistically significant responses to 40 per cent of the statements in the test. In the case of 60 per cent of responses proper answers increased with the age of the participant. Questionnaire determines that people whose opinions were more compliant with nutritional knowledge more often applied the principles of proper nutrition. Dependencies between the number of points from the test of opinions about food and nutrition and the Prohealthy-Diet-Index (pHDI-8) or the sum of points from the test and the Non-healthy-Diet-Index (nHDI-8) were indicated. People who obtained the higher pHDI-8 and the lower nHDI-8 coefficient better evaluated their diet.

The QEB questionnaire can be an effective, quick and cheap instrument recommended to examine the association between the opinion about food and nutrition and the quality of diet of people at various ages and useful in determining the directions of further education and improvement in the quality of diet, including its assessment in large population groups.

The purpose of this study was to examine Finnish seventh‐graders' (13 to 14 years old) nutrition health attitudes, perceptions of skills, reported behaviour and perceptions of families' and friends' nutrition health‐related behaviour.

The research data were collected in a baseline situation through a structured questionnaire presented to seventh‐graders (n=188) in four secondary schools, both rural and urban, in Eastern Finland. Two of the schools were experimental and two were control schools. All schools implemented nutrition health education according to the objectives of the national curriculum for basic education. Additionally, the experimental schools were developing their nutrition health education by using an ICT‐based learning environment.

The results show that seventh‐grade girls had a greater probability to follow healthy eating habits compared to seventh‐grade boys. Parental support had an important role in seventh‐grade adolescents' healthy eating habits and food choices. Additionally, adolescents' own healthy food preparation and choice skills were associated with healthy and versatile eating among seventh‐graders. As expected, no significant differences between the experimental and control schools were found at this baseline situation.

In Finland, strategies and curricula have been developed in schools to encourage children and adolescents to choose a healthy diet and to prepare healthy meals. Having high‐quality school lunches available to all and practical home economics as a school subject are good examples of well‐implemented nutrition health education, which could serve as model for nutrition health promotion worldwide.

Three events of significance to this country took place in 1899 – the British Food Journal was launched, Australia retained the Ashes, and the Boer War hostilities commenced. If challenged on the order of their importance, cricketers and Empire‐builders may be excused their preference. However, looking at it purely from the standpoint of pro bono publico, the dispassionate observer must surely opt for the birth of a certain publication as being ultimately the most beneficial of the three.

A few weeks ago a correspondent to The Times suggested that there was a good case for the establishment of a Nutrition Council; and in a recent issue of the British Medical Journal a leading article is devoted to this subject. While all will agree that the war has made us very “ food‐conscious,” and that this ensures that for some years the times will continue to be very propitious for acceptance by the public of expert advice upon food, the need for the suggested Council will be questioned; for as The Times correspondent reminds us, there are already many Bodies concerned in some way or other with nutrition. For instance, there are the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Health, the Medical Research Council, the newly‐formed Nutrition Society, the Cabinet Advisory Committee on Food Policy, the Board of Education, the Ministry of Labour and National Service, the Agricultural Research Council, the Food Investigation Board, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research—all of which have food problems to solve. Of these Bodies the war‐time Ministry of Food has been the most successful in stirring the public interest in nutrition as the basis of good health, and so impressing the necessity for making a wise selection of food articles in our daily diet. While much of the advice offered is shaped to meet war‐time circumstances, the success achieved should lead to the adoption of similar methods by any organisation dealing with future peace‐time conditions. But there is much technical information that loudly calls for expert co‐ordination and appraisal, aided by international co‐operation; and this fact favours the formation of a Nutrition Council embracing the highest authorities upon Food and Nutrition. Such a Council would be useful also as a stimulating agency for research, assuming that it is able to “ foot the bill ” ; for there remain many gaps in our knowledge of the subject of Nutrition. As suggested in the British Medical Journal article, such research should be directed “ upon co‐ordinated lines among the various sciences that converge upon the kitchen table.” Lord Horder takes the view that the proposed new Body should be constituted as a Committee of the Privy Council, and so enjoy many advantages that are lacking, in varying degree, among existing organisations above referred to. All information collected by a Nutrition Council which is of essential importance to the public would be conveyed to them by experts in publicity, by every available means, in discharge of its functions as a bureau of information upon the subject of Nutrition; and if this is done in the direct and simple terms that make understanding easy to the masses, its publicity department will not lack success. After full consideration the conclusion is forced upon us that a Nutrition Council would fulfil really useful purposes; for there is much that remains but partly, and sometimes poorly, done by agencies working independently. It would be a great gain to concentrate our efforts in one powerful Body dedicated to the sole object of the improvement of our food‐supply and our national nutrition.

Nutrition education plays a significant role in inculcating lifelong healthy dietary behaviours among adolescents. The purpose of this paper is to understand the opinions of parents and teachers regarding nutrition education in private Indian secondary schools.

A cross-sectional, self-administered, paper-based survey comprising both closed- and open-ended questions was completed by 32 teachers and 280 parents who were recruited from five private English-speaking secondary schools in Kolkata, India. Descriptive and cross-tabulation analyses were conducted to compare the responses of teachers and parents. Thematic data analysis informed by template analysis technique was performed to evaluate the qualitative data.

While the curriculum was considered interesting and easy to understand, the gendered nature of the curriculum, excessive rote learning and lack of synchrony between the curriculum and school food services were highlighted as shortcomings of the existing curriculum. The need for the dissemination of food skills either through a compulsory food and nutrition curriculum or through extra-mural activities was expressed by most respondents. Both these ideas were indicative of strong support and motivation for modification in the current curriculum.

These findings emphasise the support for a skills-focussed food and nutrition curriculum to inculcate experiential culinary skills and comprehensive nutrition knowledge in Indian adolescents, thus improving their nutritional and health profiles.

This is the first cross-sectional survey to investigate the views of parents and teachers about the status of food and nutrition education in private Indian secondary schools.

Research findings have suggested that today’s consumers view nutrition in a positive light. The findings of this survey support such evidence. The majority of consumers consider diet to be a very important component of their lifestyles and regard nutrition as a positive attribute of food products. A high level of awareness of nutrition labelling is evident among consumers, and 58 per cent of respondents use nutrition labels. However, consumers have to deduce information from nutrition labels in their current format. This proves rather difficult as knowledge of a balanced diet is quite low. Therefore, consumers find it difficult to implement current dietary advice through the use of nutrition labels, and only 17 per cent of the sample surveyed use labels for this purpose. Social networks and the “popular” media were found to be the most used sources of nutrition information, the medical profession was seen as a source of “cure” rather than prevention and a negligible percentage of the sample used official government information channels. Concludes that nutrition labels have a role to play; however, the food industry needs to respond to consumer needs and education/information provision needs to be improved.

Secondary school food education provides students with opportunities to build lifelong healthy dietary practices. A number of stakeholder groups are important for the success of this form of education. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to examine young adults’ and parents’ opinions of secondary school food education.

An online survey was administered to 1,086 respondents drawn from a commercial research panel.

In total, 50-60 per cent of all respondents agreed that food education should be compulsory for years seven to ten and 31-32 per cent of respondents agreed that it should be compulsory for years 11 and 12. Almost 69 per cent suggested one to three hours per week for food education. More than 75 per cent of respondents agreed that there should be a non-compulsory food and nutrition subject for year 11 and 12 students and believed that this subject would help students to develop their food-related knowledge and skills.

There is a gap between parents’ and young adults’ views of school food education and what is actually practiced in Australian secondary schools. Obtaining their opinions in future food-related education and policy reforms could help design and deliver food education to better meet the expectations of its recipients: students and their families.

The examination of large number of young adults’ and parents’ opinions of school food education makes this study unique.

Twenty‐three years ago the most frequently met among many slogans was “ Food Will Win the War.” To‐day our food problems are fully as important to our defence; but they present many new aspects. Then our prime duty was to save food : now it is to consume food in the way most conducive to fitness. Our knowledge of nutrition has advanced so rapidly that much of it is too new to have been assimilated into our everyday thought and practice. Yet it is precisely as guidance to everyday use of our familiar foods that the newest knowledge of nutrition can be of most benefit: of benefit both to the one‐third of our people who are officially declared “ ill‐nourished,” and to the great majority of the rest of us as well. For while finding that much of our previously baffling disease and frustration is due to shortage of certain nutritional factors in the food supply, research has also shown that a more scientifically guided use of our everyday foods constitutes a sort of superior chemical engineering of our own mechanisms which can increase the vitality and efficiency even of those people who are already healthy and efficient. The relations of nutrition to the functioning of the mind are, of course, more difficult of controlled investigation and not yet as objectively demonstrable as to the effects of food upon bodily functions and length of life. But careful research is now showing that even within the range of fully normal conditions, our daily food choices have much more important effects than science ever previously supposed upon that internal chemistry that directly environs and conditions all our life processes. The blood is the great mediator of this internal environment, and the same blood circulates through the brain as through all the other organs of the body, bringing its help or its hindrance to both mental and muscular activities. True there is much which remains to be clarified by further research; but the already established findings, of recent and current nutritional investigation, need only to be more widely known and used in order to make our people much stronger for the defence of our civilisation, and for its permanent advancement when the emergency has passed. In our “ intellectual climate ” of the moment there is still a good deal of inertia because the newest knowledge is not yet sufficiently understood, while at the same time the new view is perhaps being over‐coloured by some writers. This paper therefore does not seek to add more assertions; but rather to review objectively the evidence on what the Council of National Defence has announced as one of our present‐day needs, “ to make the American people nutrition‐conscious in terms of the nutritional science of to‐day.” Nutrition presents three major aspects : (1) that in which food serves as fuel to supply energy for the activities of the bodily machine; (2) that of the assimilation of certain food constituents into structural material first for the growth and later for the upkeep of the body tissues; and (3) the utilisation of food substances either directly or indirectly to serve the body in those self‐regulatory processes by which it maintains its relatively “ steady states ” or essential internal environment. It is in its energy aspect that nutrition has most fully arrived at the status of an exact science. Expert opinion is well agreed on the fundamental principles of the energy transformations in the body, on the values of the foodstuffs as sources of energy, and on at least the broad lines of theory as to the influence of different bodily conditions in determining the energy need. On the latter points, especially, many laboratories are actively engaged in increasing the precision of present knowledge, and at least three well‐endowed nutrition laboratories—those of the Carnegie Institution, of the Russell Sage Institute, and of the Rochester University Department of Vital Economics—are devoting their resources especially to the perfection of the energy aspects of nutritional knowledge. The protein aspect of nutritional research has also reached a relatively mature status with well‐defined objectives. Among many other laboratories working in this field, that of the United States Department of Agriculture is giving special attention to the purification and description of the proteins themselves; and the laboratory of physiological chemistry of the University of Illinois is very actively investigating the nutritional relationships of the individual amino acids, with the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation. We may look forward with confidence and great gratification to a presumably fairly near future in which this aspect of nutritional need can be stated quantitatively in terms of ten individually indispensable amino acids. The catalysts which make the chemical processes in the body go fast enough to support life overlap and in a measure integrate the subject matter divisions of the chemistry of nutrition. They function in the energy aspect; and in their own chemical constitutions they are derivatives of proteins (or their amino acids), mineral elements, and vitamins. This very active field of research is quite as frequently classified with general biochemistry as with nutrition. Until its current era of “ newer knowledge,” the chemistry of food and nutrition had for several decades faced the dilemma that foods could be analysed as elaborately, and their composition accounted for with as close an approach to one hundred per cent., as other natural materials; and yet nutrition could not be sustained with pure mixtures of the substances that the analyses revealed. Seeking deeper insights, chemists broadened their research methods to include the systematic use of feeding experiments with laboratory animals, carried on with as careful attention to accuracy of controls as in other experimental researches in the exact sciences. This extension of method in chemical research has been rewarded with a rapid series of discoveries of substances which are essential to our nutrition, but whose very existence was, until recent years, either entirely unknown or only vaguely apprehended. Neither in chemical nature nor in nutritional function do these substances have much in common with each other. That they came to be called by the group name vitamins was not the result of their being naturally related, but rather of the two circumstances, (1) that they were all discovered through the use of the same development of research method, and (2) that the discoveries of their existence and importance followed each other too rapidly for physical isolation and chemical identification and nomenclature to keep pace. The latter, however, are steadily catching up, and in several cases new names, which are individually distinctive of either the chemical structures or the historic associations of the substances, have been coined and are coming into general use.

The globally recognised link between diet and health needs to be communicated to consumers to facilitate healthy food choices. Thus, this paper aims to determine South African (SA) metropolitan consumers' opinions and beliefs about the food-health link, as well as their opinions and use of health information on food labels.

A cross-sectional study using fieldworker-administered questionnaires was conducted. Using stratified randomised sampling, 1,997 respondents were recruited. The data were weighted to represent the metropolitan SA adult population (n=10,695,000).

Practically significantly more respondents agreed than disagreed there is a food-health link and that health messages on food labels are supported by scientific research. Respondents' opinions on health information on food labels were mostly positive, as confirmed by the average opinions for the different ethnic groups. The results identified a lack of interest, time and price concerns, and habitual purchasing as reasons for not reading food labels. Health-concerned respondents also considered labels as important health information sources.

Consumer education on the food-health link and the use of health information on food labels should address the deficiencies identified through the opinions and use of food labels by these respondents.

Representative results of SA metropolitan consumers in this study are significant since third world countries are burdened by various diseases and former studies only used limited-sized non-probability samples which could not be generalised.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the food system professionals’ opinions of a new senior secondary school food literacy curriculum named Victorian Certificate of Education Food Studies in Victoria, Australia.

A purposive sample of 34 food system professionals from different sub-sectors within the Australian food system was interviewed individually in late 2015 and early 2016. Interviews were analysed using the template analysis technique.

Most participants appreciated the extensive coverage of food literacy aspects in this new curriculum. However, many suggested amendments to the curriculum including pay less emphasis on food history-related topics and pay more focus on primary food production, nutrition awareness and promotion, and food security, food sovereignty, social justice, and food politics.

A well-structured, comprehensive secondary school food literacy curriculum could play a crucial role in providing food literacy education for adolescents. This will help them to establish healthy food patterns and become responsible food citizens. The findings of this study can be used to modify the new curriculum to make it a more comprehensive, logical, and feasible curriculum. Moreover, these findings could be used to inform the design of new secondary school food literacy curricula in Australia and other countries.

The exploration of perspectives of professionals from a broad range of food- and nutrition-related areas about school food literacy education makes this study unique. This study highlights the importance of food professionals’ opinions in secondary school food-related curricula development.