| 1. |
- Berggren, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Nordic children's conceptualizations of healthy eating in relation to school lunch
- 2017
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Ingår i: Health Education. - : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 0965-4283 .- 1758-714X. ; 117:2, s. 130-147
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: Pupils' perspective should be better taken into account when developing nutrition education at school. The purpose of this paper is to explore Nordic children's perspectives on the healthiness of meals in the context of school lunches.Design/methodology/approach: In total, 78 focus group discussions were conducted with 10-11-year-old girls and boys (n=457) from schools in Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which were participating in the Nordic school meal project ProMeal during the school year 2013-2014. A flexible discussion guide and stimulus material in the form of 14 photographs displaying different school lunch contexts were used. The discussions were analyzed using thematic analysis.Findings: These Nordic children seem to share the adult-set aim of healthy eating in the school context as a socio-cultural norm. Although healthy eating was constructed as a rational, normative and acceptable way to eat at school, unhealthy eating was emphasized as negotiably acceptable when eaten occasionally and under certain circumstances (e.g. at special occasions). Unhealthy eating also comprised emotionally laden descriptions such as enjoyment and disgust. Practical implications: Children's conceptualizations of healthy eating are connected to nutritional, socio-cultural, emotional and normative dimensions, which should be reflected also when developing nutrition education in school.Originality/value: The need for research exploring children's experiences of, and understandings about, school lunch motivated this unique multicenter study with a large number of participating children. In the focus groups a child-oriented, photo-elicitation method was used.
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| 2. |
- Berggren, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Perspectives about health outcomes related to food among Nordic children
- 2016
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Perspectives about health outcomes related to food among Nordic childrenLinda Berggren* 1, Sanna Talvia2, Eldbjørg Fossgard3, Unnur Björk Arnfjörð4, Agneta Hörnell 1, Anna Ólafsdóttir 4,Ingibjörg Gunnarsdóttir 5, Hege Wergedahl 3, Hanna Lagström 6, Maria Waling1, Cecilia Olsson11Umeå University, Department of food and nutrition, Umeå, Sweden, 2Child and Youth Research institute, Turku, Finland,3Faculty of Education, Bergen University College, Bergren, Norway, 4School of Education, University of Iceland, 5TheNational University Hospital of Iceland , Unit for Nutrition Research, Reykjavik, Iceland, 6University of Turku, TurkuInstitute of Child and Youth Research, Turku, FinlandPreferred presentation type: Only PosterBackground and aims: Dietary intake in school has previously been studied but little is known about Nordic children’sperspectives on food healthiness in the school lunch context. This study aims to explore 10-year-old Nordic children’sperspectives on outcomes of healthy eating in the school lunch context.Methods: Seventy-two focus groups were conducted in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland with a total of 423participants. A flexible topic guide and 14 preselected photos displaying different school lunch contexts were used asstimuli material. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis.Results: Children reasoned that school lunch are and should be healthy since the food eaten at school has short andlong term outcomes related to cognitive and physical health. It was commonly expressed that food eaten in school affectsschool work and functioning in learning activities. It was also stated that food eaten in school can have negative andpositive effects on your mood, e.g. eating unhealthy food or an insufficient amount of food, puts you in a bad mood whichcan affect the rest of the school day. The discussions mainly relied on negative short term effects such as feeling ill andreduced stamina. Some food and food groups such as vegetables, milk and fish, were mentioned in a more positivesense highlighting the positive short- and long term outcomes on health. When describing the long-term outcomes ofeating, children mentioned that healthy eating helps to build muscles, grow and prevent diseases, such as cancer anddiabetes. Sugar and fat was frequently mentioned as being the cause of overweight and some other diseases.Conclusion: In general, Nordic children have an adequate understanding of established relations between food andhealth. Yet, we know that many pupils do not eat according to recommendations. This highlights the importance of takingthe complexity of food choice into consideration in nutritional education.Disclosure of Interest: None to declare
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| 3. |
- Bergman, Frida, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Treadmill workstations in office workers who are overweight or obese : a randomised controlled trial
- 2018
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Ingår i: The Lancet Public Health. - : The Lancet Publishing Group. - 2468-2667. ; 3:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Treadmill workstations that enable office workers to walk on a treadmill while working at their computers might increase physical activity in offices, but long-term effects are unknown. We therefore investigated whether treadmill workstations in offices increased daily walking time.Methods: We did a randomised controlled trial of healthy office workers who were either overweight or obese. We recruited participants from 13 different companies, which comprised 17 offices, in Umeå, Sweden. We included people who were aged 40-67 years, had sedentary work tasks, and had a body-mass index (BMI) between 25 kg/m2 and 40 kg/m2. After the baseline measurement, we stratified participants by their BMI (25-30 kg/m2 and >30 to 40 kg/m2); subsequently, an external statistician randomly assigned these participants (1:1) to either the intervention group (who received treadmill workstations for optional use) or the control group (who continued to work at their sit-stand desks as usual). Participants in the intervention group received reminders in boosting emails sent out to them at four occasions during the study period. Researchers were masked to group assignment until after analysis of the primary outcome. After the baseline measurement, participants were not masked to group belongings. The primary outcome was total daily walking time at weekdays and weekends, measured at baseline, 2 months, 6 months, 10 months, and 13 months with the accelerometer activPAL (PAL Technologies, Glasgow, UK), which was worn on the thigh of participants for 24 h a day for 7 consecutive days. We used an intention-to-treat approach for our analyses. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01997970, and is closed to new participants.Findings: Between Nov 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014, a total of 80 participants were recruited and enrolled (n=40 in both the intervention and control groups). Daily walking time during total time awake at weekdays increased between baseline and 13 months by 18 min (95% CI 9 to 26) in the intervention group and 1 min (-7 to 9) in the control group (difference 22 min [95% CI 7 to 37], pinteraction=0·00045); for weekend walking, the change from baseline to 13 months was 5 min (-8 to 18) in the intervention group and 8 min (-5 to 21) in the control group (difference -1 min [-19 to 17]; pinteraction=0·00045). Neither measure met our predetermined primary outcome of 30 min difference in total walking time between the intervention and control group, so the primary outcome of the trial was not met. One adverse event was reported in a participant who accidently stepped on their Achilles tendon.Interpretation: In a sedentary work environment, treadmill workstations result in a statistically significant but smaller-than-expected increase in daily walking time. Future studies need to investigate how increasing physical activity at work might have potentially compensatory effects on non-work activity.
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| 4. |
- Cecilia, Olsson, et al.
(författare)
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School meals do not have a given place in Swedish school's quality management
- 2016
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Ingår i: Health Education Journal. - : SAGE Publications. - 0017-8969 .- 1748-8176. ; 75:8, s. 961-971
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objectives: Sweden is one of three countries worldwide which has a legal requirement to ensure that pupils in compulsory school should be offered free, nutritious school meals. Furthermore, the law states that school meal provision should be included in schools' internal quality management (IQM) system. The objective of this study was to examine to what extent schools in Sweden are following the legal requirement to include school meals in IQM and the relationship between this inclusion and the application of government advisory guidelines regarding school meals.Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Head teachers evenly distributed across all regions in Sweden representing municipality schools, independent schools and Sami schools. Method: Web-based questionnaire completed by 216 head teachers.Results: About half of the schools did not meet the legal requirement to include schools meals in the IQM. Furthermore, familiarity with and use of the National Food Agency (NFA) guidelines and the web-based tool School Food Sweden, as well as activities considered as part of a pedagogical school meal and the inclusion of school meals in interdisciplinary work, were reported to be less common in schools not including school meals in their IQM system.Conclusion: Findings suggest that when there is inclusion of school meals in a school's quality management system, the school is also more likely to include school meals as part of educational activities. By acknowledging school meal provision as part of the educational process, possibilities are opened up for health-promoting activities to prevent non-communicable disease.
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| 5. |
- Hörnell, Agneta, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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School meals and health : the PROMEAL-study
- 2016
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Ingår i: Food & Nutrition Research. - : SNF Swedish Nutrition Foundation. - 1654-6628 .- 1654-661X. ; 60:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 6. |
- Jonsson, Bert, et al.
(författare)
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The effect of schooling on basic cognition in selected Nordic Countries
- 2017
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Ingår i: Europe's Journal of Psychology. - : Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). - 1841-0413. ; 13:4, s. 645-666
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present study investigated schooling effects on cognition. Cognitive data were collected as part of a research project (ProMeal) that investigated school meals and measured the intake of school lunch in relation to children’s health, cognitive function, and classroom learning in four Nordic countries, among children between 10–11 years of age. It was found that Finnish pupils attending 4th grade were not, on any measure, outperformed by Norwegian and Icelandic pupils attending 5th and Swedish pupils attending 4th grade on a task measuring working memory capacity, processing speed, inhibition, and in a subsample on response- and attention control. Moreover, boys were found to perform superior to girls on tasks measuring processing speed. However, girls were found to perform better on tasks related to attention and self-control. The results are discussed in relation to the reciprocal association between cognition and schooling and whether these results reflect quality differences between schools in the four Nordic countries; most notably in comparison to Finland.
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| 7. |
- Juniusdottir, Ragnheidur, et al.
(författare)
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Composition of school meals in Sweden, Finland and Iceland : Official guidelines and comparison with practice and availability
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of School Health. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 0022-4391 .- 1746-1561. ; 88:10, s. 744-753
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Nutritious and attractive school meals can improve health equality and public health. Current official guidelines and recommendations on food and nutrient composition of school meals in 3 Nordic countries; Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, are described and compared with actual practice, ie, availability of foods and nutrients in served reference meals in 3 selected areas in each country.METHODS: A country comparison was made between official guidelines, and actual practice was studied in participating schools. Reference portions of school meals (N = 170) provided in 24 compulsory schools were photographed and weighed. Food and nutrient availability were compared with official guidelines in each country.RESULTS: Emphasis of recommendations on whole‐grain bread in Sweden, whole grains in Finland, and fish in Iceland were reflected in food availability. The energy content of the meals provided was lower than guidelines and there was a large variation in energy content between days.CONCLUSIONS: The guidelines regarding food availability were quite well followed, but the large variation in energy and nutrient content of provided school meals between days indicates a need for standardization.
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| 8. |
- Olafsdottir, Anna S., et al.
(författare)
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Development and Validation of a Photographic Method to Use for Dietary Assessment in School Settings
- 2016
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 11:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective To develop and validate a photographic method aimed at making assessment of dietary intake in school canteens non-obstrusive, practical and feasible. Methods The study was conducted in two elementary schools representing two different school canteen systems; main dish being served by canteen staff (Iceland), and complete self-serving (Sweden). Food items in serving and leftovers were weighed and photographed. Trained researchers estimated weights of food items by viewing the photographs and comparing them with pictures of half and full reference portions with known weights. Plates of servings and leftovers from 48 children during five school days (n = 448 plates) and a total of 5967 food items were estimated. The researchers' estimates were then compared with the true weight of the foods and the energy content calculated. Results Weighed and estimated amounts correlated across meals both in grams and as total energy (0.853-0.977, p<0.001). The agreement between estimated energy content in school meals was close to the true measurement from weighed records; on average 4-19 kcal below true values. Organisation of meal service impacted the efficacy of the method as seen in the difference between countries; with Iceland (served by canteen staff) having higher rate of acceptable estimates than Sweden (self-serving), being 95% vs 73% for total amount (g) in serving. Iceland more often had serving size between or above the half and full reference plates compared with Sweden. Conclusions The photographic method provides acceptable estimates of food and energy intake in school canteens. However, greater accuracy can be expected when foods are served by canteen staff compared with self-serving.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Otten, Julia, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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A heterogeneous response of liver and skeletal muscle fat to the combination of a Paleolithic diet and exercise in obese individuals with type 2 diabetes : a randomised controlled trial
- 2018
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Ingår i: Diabetologia. - : Springer. - 0012-186X .- 1432-0428. ; 61:7, s. 1548-1559
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aims/hypothesis: The aim of the study was to investigate ectopic fat deposition and insulin sensitivity, in a parallel single-blinded randomised controlled trial, comparing Paleolithic diet alone with the combination of Paleolithic diet and exercise in individuals with type 2 diabetes. Methods: Thirty-two individuals with type 2 diabetes with BMI 25-40 kg/m(2) and 30-70 years of age followed a Paleolithic diet ad libitum for 12 weeks. In addition, study participants were randomised by computer program to either supervised combined exercise training (PD-EX group) or standard care exercise recommendations (PD group). Staff performing examinations and assessing outcomes were blinded to group assignment. Thirteen participants were analysed in each group: hepatic and peripheral insulin sensitivity were measured using the hyperinsulinaemic-euglycaemic clamp technique combined with [6,6-H-2(2)]glucose infusion, and liver fat was assessed by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy; both analyses were secondary endpoints. Intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) content was measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy as a secondary analysis. All examinations were performed at Umca University Hospital, Umca, Sweden. Results: Both study groups showed a median body weight loss of 7 kg. Fat mass decreased by 5.7 kg in the PD group and by 6.5 kg in the PD-EX group. Maximum oxygen uptake increased in the PD-EX group only. Liver fat showed a consistent reduction (74% decrease) in the PD group, while the response in the PD-EX group was heterogeneous (p < 0.05 for the difference between groups). IMCL content of the soleus muscle decreased by 40% in the PD group and by 22% in the PD-EX group (p < 0.05 for the difference between groups). Both groups improved their peripheral and adipose tissue insulin sensitivity, but not their hepatic insulin sensitivity. Plasma fetuin-A decreased by 11% in the PD group (p < 0.05) and remained unchanged in the PD-EX group. Liver fat changes during the intervention were correlated with changes in fetuin-A (r(S) = 0.63, p < 0.01). Participants did not report any important adverse events caused by the intervention. Conclusions/interpretation: A Paleolithic diet reduced liver fat and IMCL content, while there was a tissue-specific heterogeneous response to added exercise training.
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