Summary
The palatable, energy‐dense foods that characterize modern environments can promote unhealthy eating habits, along with humans' predispositions to accept sweet tastes and reject those that ...are sour or bitter. Yet food preferences are malleable, and examining food preference learning during early life can highlight ways to promote acceptance of healthier foods. This narrative review describes research from the past 10 years focused on food preference learning from the prenatal period through early childhood (ages 2–5 years).
Exposure to a variety of healthy foods from the start, including during the prenatal period, early milk‐feeding and the introduction to complementary foods and beverages, can support subsequent acceptance of those foods. Yet development is plastic, and healthier food preferences can still be promoted after infancy. In early childhood, research supports starting with the simplest strategies, such as repeated exposure and modelling, reserving other strategies for use when needed to motivate the initial tasting necessary for repeated exposure effects to begin.
This review can help caregivers and practitioners to promote the development of healthy food preferences early in life. Specific implementation recommendations, the role of individual differences and next steps for research in this area are also discussed.
Summary
Background
Breakfast consumption has been associated with reduced risk of overweight and obesity among children, but previous evidence reviews fail to confirm a causal relationship.
...Objectives
To review recent literature on breakfast consumption and adiposity among children and discuss potential underlying mechanisms.
Methods
A comprehensive literature search of studies published since the 2010 US National Evidence Library review (January 2010–January 2015) was conducted.
Results
Twelve studies met inclusion criteria. All were conducted in industrialized countries: six in Europe, four in the USA, one in China and one in Australia. Ten of the studies used observational longitudinal designs, with follow‐up periods ranging from 1 to 27 years (median: 3, mean: 7.4); of these, eight reported inverse associations between breakfast consumption and excess adiposity, while two found no association. The other studies (1 case‐control, 1 experimental) each reported a protective effect of breakfast consumption on overweight and obesity among children.
Conclusions
Findings corroborate results from previous reviews, adding support for a possible, protective role for breakfast consumption in preventing excess adiposity during childhood and adolescence. However, drawing a causal conclusion from the collective evidence is curtailed by methodological limitations and inconsistencies, including study design, follow‐up duration and frequency, exposure and outcome assessment, as well as limited consideration of confounding, mediating and effect‐modifying variables. More rigorous study designs employing valid and standardized measurement of relevant variables are needed.
Lake trout Salvelinus namaycush (Walbaum) raised for stocking experienced yearly (2011–13) winter epizootics of epitheliocystis. Affected fish were dispersed on the bottom of the tank, had decreased ...feed and fright response, and mortality often reached 40%. Peak mortality occurred within 3 weeks of the appearance of clinical signs, and outbreaks typically lasted 6 weeks. Affected fish had no gross lesions but histologically had branchial epithelial necrosis and lamellar hyperplasia, with small to large numbers of scattered epithelial cells containing 10‐ to 20‐μm inclusions. A longitudinal study was undertaken of one annual outbreak, and lamellar hyperplasia was most closely associated with mortality. The number of inclusions was statistically greater (P < 0.05) before and during peak mortality, but inclusions were present in low numbers before clinical signs occurred. Results of histochemical staining, immunohistochemistry and transmission electron microscopy supported the presence of a β‐proteobacteria rather than a Chlamydiales bacterium within inclusions. PCR primers to identify Chlamydiales did not give consistent results. However, the use of universal 16S rDNA bacterial primers in conjunction with laser capture microdissection of inclusions demonstrated that a β‐proteobacteria was consistently associated with affected gills and is more likely the cause of the disease in lake trout.
Many lipoproteins are expressed on the surfaces of mycoplasmas, and some have been implicated as playing roles in pathogenesis. Family 2 lipoproteins of Mycoplasma pneumoniae have a conserved ..."mycoplasma lipoprotein X" central domain and a "mycoplasma lipoprotein 10" C-terminal domain and are differentially expressed in response to environmental conditions. Homologues of family 2 lipoproteins are Mycoplasma specific and include the lipoprotein of Mycoplasma gallisepticum, encoded by the MGA0674 gene. Comparative transcriptomic analysis of the M. gallisepticum live attenuated vaccine strain F and the virulent strain Rlow, reported in this study, indicated that MGA0674 is one of several differentially expressed genes. The MGA0674-encoded lipoprotein is a proteolytically processed, immunogenic, TX-114 detergent-phase protein which appears to have antigenic divergence between field strains Rlow and S6. We examined the virulence of an Rlow ΔMGA0674 mutant (P1H9) in vivo and observed reduced recovery and attenuated virulence in the tracheas of experimentally infected chickens. The virulence of two additional Rlow ΔMGA0674 mutants, 2162 and 2204, was assessed in a second in vivo virulence experiment. These mutants exhibited partial to complete attenuation in vivo, but recovery was observed more frequently. Since only Mycoplasma species harbor homologues of MGA0674, the gene product has been renamed "Mycoplasma-specific lipoprotein A" (MslA). Collectively, these data indicate that MslA is an immunogenic lipoprotein exhibiting reduced expression in an attenuated strain and plays a role in M. gallisepticum virulence.
Few children in the United States meet national fruit and vegetable intake recommendations, highlighting a need for interventions. Children's food preferences act as a barrier to fruit and vegetable ...consumption, but prior research has demonstrated that repeated taste exposures can increase children's acceptance of these foods. Prior research in this area has typically utilized controlled procedures in which children sample small tastes of target foods over repeated occasions. The primary aim of the present pilot study was to test whether children's preferences for target fruits and vegetables increased following repeated taste exposures to them through hands-on cooking in a community setting. Seventeen 6-to-8-year-old children participated in biweekly study sessions during six weeks of a summer camp serving lower-income families. Liking of (yummy, just OK, yucky) and rank-ordered preferences for nine fruits and vegetables were measured before and after exposure sessions (pre-test and post-test). Based on pre-test assessments, four relatively less liked foods (two fruits, two vegetables) were chosen to become target foods. Children were then exposed to target foods during nine hands-on cooking sessions; liking of target foods was also measured at a midpoint assessment. At each exposure session, children assisted with preparation of a different snack using a recipe involving target foods and then ate the prepared snack together. Preferences for target foods increased from pre-test (Median = 5.8) to post-test (Median = 5.5; p < 0.05). On average, the majority of children rated the prepared snacks favorably. Results from this pilot study demonstrate the potential of applying repeated exposure techniques via hands-on cooking in a community setting.
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