(Press-News.org) AUDIO:
In a systematic, in-depth review focused on the use of behavior theory in interventions aimed to increase fruit and vegetable intake among children, researchers found theory-based interventions to be beneficial...
Click here for more information.
PHILADELPHIA, PA, November 7, 2014 - Researchers try to develop interventions that are most likely to work. Some times that involves deciding which activities should be included, such as whether to have cooking classes or be involved in a garden. Some times that involves deciding how many people should be involved to find truly meaningful results. However, a little talked about consideration is whether to include behavior theory within the intervention. Things like attitudes, self-efficacy, social norms and others may or may not be included in the intervention or reflected by the activities. Often, this decision is made based on the researcher's own bias as to whether behavior theory helps or not. However, researchers at the USDA, Baylor College of Medicine, and Federal University of Santa Catarina (Florianópolis, Brazil) decided to look at the data already published in order to guide future research.
In a systematic, in-depth review focused on the use of behavior theory in interventions aimed to increase fruit and vegetable intake among children, researchers found theory-based interventions to be beneficial for vegetable intake only. The authors determined the effects of theory use to be limited overall.
"Higher levels of fruit and vegetable intake protect against hypertension, heart disease, stroke, and other chronic diseases and may be a strategy for obesity prevention among children and adults, but fruit and vegetable interventions have been minimally effective," concluded lead author Cassandra Diep, PhD, US Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine.. Her team wanted to determine if using or not using a behavior theory contributed to effectiveness. However, they found "little or mixed support for enhanced dietary change with use of theory, multiple theories, or a formal planning process in dietary change interventions." This result may be surprising to many researchers, professional organizations, and funding agencies that stress the inclusion of behavior theory in nutrition programs.
The researchers focused their work on the hypothesis that interventions clearly based on theory were more effective in changing fruit and vegetable intake among children than interventions with no behavioral theoretical foundation. To do so, the authors searched for peer-reviewed studies on fruit and vegetable interventions among children and adolescents that met five exclusionary criteria. In total, 29 articles were included, all of which appeared in journals between 1989 and 2013, with the majority published in or after 2000. Most of the studies occurred in the United States.
A total of 33 interventions were found among the 29 articles, eight with no theoretical foundation, 15 using one theory, and the remaining 10 using two theories. Social Cognitive Theory was the most common, as it was used in 17 interventions; Theory of Planned Behavior was used in six interventions. In the statistical analysis, interventions had a small but significantly greater impact on vegetable consumption than control conditions and a moderate effect on fruit and vegetable consumption combined. After controlling for study quality, theory use remained a significant predictor for vegetable intake only.
Given these findings, the researchers recommend that future studies examine the causality and strength of relationships between theoretical variables and dietary change behaviors. Additional research could also focus on what is needed to identify practical or experience-based procedures that may be useful to incorporate into interventions.
INFORMATION:
An experimental drug aimed at treating a common liver disease showed promising results and potential problems in a multicenter clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. The FLINT study found that people with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) who took obeticholic acid (OCA) had improved liver health during that period, including decreased inflammation and fat in the liver and decreased body weight versus people receiving a placebo. OCA was also associated with increases in itching and total cholesterol.
The findings of FLINT, or the Farnesoid X Receptor ...
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have completed the largest and most sensitive visible-light imaging survey of dusty debris disks around other stars. These dusty disks, likely created by collisions between leftover objects from planet formation, were imaged around stars as young as 10 million years old and as mature as more than 1 billion years old.
"It's like looking back in time to see the kinds of destructive events that once routinely happened in our solar system after the planets formed," said survey leader Glenn Schneider of the University of Arizona's ...
Philadelphia - Olaparib, an experimental twice-daily oral cancer drug, produces an overall tumor response rate of 26 percent in several advanced cancers associated with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, according to new research co-led by the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The positive response provides new hope for patients with ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers whose conditions have not responded to standard therapies. Results of the phase II study are available online in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
For ...
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A groundbreaking paper from a team of Florida State University biologists could lead to a better understanding of how plants could adapt to and survive environmental swings such as droughts or floods.
The research, published in the latest issue of the journal The Plant Cell, sheds light on how chromatin (the complex of DNA and proteins) is organized in a cell and how plants regulate genetic material, so that some genes are turned on and others are turned off.
"If you understand how plants regulate their genetic material, you can possibly manipulate ...
Humane transport of livestock is important for both carcass quality and animal welfare. However, it is difficult to mitigate stress for animals in-transit. During a typical journey, calves lose weight due to the stress of weaning and being withdrawn from feed and water during transport. Many factors contribute to this stress, including welfare of the calves before transportation, and temperature and space allowance inside the trailer during transportation. A better understanding of the pre- and post-transportation risk factors and in-transit factors that influence calf ...
Food waste has become a serious problem in the United States and other countries. Approximately 34 million tons of food waste is deposited in landfills each year in the United States alone (EPA, 2014). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized the use of food waste as animal feed as one of the best means to add value to food waste, while reducing landfill costs and greenhouse gas emissions, and at the same time improving food security.
In an article published in the November 2014 issue of the Journal of Animal Science ("Nutritional value of ensiled grocery ...
Wheat, along with corn and barley, is one of the three major feed grains used in North America. Most of the feed-class wheat is fed to poultry and swine. Beef producers are reluctant to use large quantities of wheat in diets of feedlot cattle because wheat ferments considerably more rapidly in the rumen than corn or barley and increases the risk of ruminal acidosis, which can compromise the health, wellbeing, and productivity of cattle.
In a study published in the November 2014 issue of the Journal of Animal Science ("Impact of hard vs. soft wheat and monensin level on ...
When the dinosaurs ruled the earth, they were already bugged by creatures who had gotten there many millions of years earlier: Dragonflies and damselflies. In fact, says Rutgers University-Newark biologist, Dr. Jessica Ware, the first creatures to take to the skies of earth did so 406 million years ago.
Ware knows of what she speaks: She is part of an international team of 100 researchers that just finished an unprecedented two-year project to map the evolution of insects using a molecular data set of unparalleled quality and dimensions. The initial report on their ...
Most cancer deaths occur because of metastasis, yet progress in preventing and treating migratory cancer cells has been slow.
"It's been particularly challenging to design drugs that work against metastasis," said Taran Gujral, research fellow in systems biology at Harvard Medical School.
"Unfortunately, many cancers aren't detected until after they've already metastasized."
Gujral and colleagues have now identified a cellular culprit that should help researchers better understand how metastasis begins. Their findings may also inform the design of new treatments ...
Pain is a common symptom of cancer and side effect of cancer treatment, and treating cancer-related pain is often a challenge for health care providers.
The Penny George Institute for Health and Healing researchers found that integrative medicine therapies can substantially decrease pain and anxiety for hospitalized cancer patients. Their findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs.
"Following Integrative medicine interventions, such as medical massage, acupuncture, guided imagery or relaxation response ...
