Objective:To examine whether televised food commercials influence preschool children's food preferences.

Design: In this randomized, controlled trial, preschool children viewed a videotape of a popular children's cartoon either with or without embedded commercials. Children were then asked to identify their preferences from pairs of similar products, one of which was advertised in the videotape with embedded commercials. Preschoolers' parents were interviewed to determine children's demographic characteristics and media use patterns.

Subjects: Forty-six 2- to 6-year-olds from a Head Start program in northern California.

Statistical Analyses: For demographic and media use characteristics, univariate data were examined and Student t and chi 2 tests were used to test for differences between the control and treatment groups. We calculated the Cochran Q statistic to assess whether the proportion of those choosing advertised food items was significantly higher in the treatment group than in the control group.

Results: Children exposed to the videotape with embedded commercials were significantly more likely to choose the advertised items than children who saw the same videotape without commercials (Qdiff = 8.13, df = 1, P .01).

Conclusions/Applications: Even brief exposures to televised food commercials can influence preschool children's food preferences. Nutritionists and health educators should advise parents to limit their preschooler's exposure to television advertisements. Furthermore, advocates should raise the public policy issue of advertising and young children, especially given the recent epidemic of childhood obesity and the ever-changing media environment.

Objective: Identifying parental behaviors that influence childhood obesity is critical for the development of effective prevention and treatment programs. Findings from a prior laboratory study suggest that parents who impose control over their children's eating may interfere with their children's ability to regulate intake, potentially resulting in overweight. These findings have been widely endorsed; however, the direct relationship between parental control of children's intake and their children's degree of overweight has not been shown in a generalized sample.

Research Methods and Procedures: This study surveyed 792 third-grade children with diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds from 13 public elementary schools. Parental control over children's intake was assessed through telephone interviews using a state-of-the-art instrument, and children were measured for height, weight, and triceps skinfold thickness.

Results: Counter to the hypothesis, parental control over children's intake was inversely associated with overweight in girls, as measured by body mass index, r = -0.12, p 0.05, and triceps skinfolds, r = -0.11, p 0.05. This weak relationship became only marginally significant when controlling for parents' perceptions of their own weight, level of household education, and children's age. No relationship between parental control of children's intake and their children's degree of overweight was found in boys.

Discussion: Previous observations of the influence of parental control over children's intake in middle-class white families did not generalize to 8- to 9-year-olds in families with diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. The present findings reveal a more complex relationship between parental behaviors and children's weight status.

Children spend a substantial portion of their lives watching television. Investigators have hypothesized that television viewing causes obesity by one or more of three mechanisms: (1) displacement of physical activity, (2) increased calorie consumption while watching or caused by the effects of advertising, and (3) reduced resting metabolism. The relationship between television viewing and obesity has been examined in a relatively large number of cross-sectional epidemiologic studies but few longitudinal studies. Many of these studies have found relatively weak, positive associations, but others have found no associations or mixed results; however, the weak and variable associations found in these studies may be the result of limitations in measurement. Several experimental studies of reducing television viewing recently have been completed. Most of these studies have not tested directly the effects of reducing television viewing behaviors alone, but their results support the suggestion that reducing television viewing may help to reduce the risk for obesity or help promote weight loss in obese children. Finally, one school-based, experimental study was designed specifically to test directly the causal relationship between television viewing behaviors and body fatness. The results of this randomized, controlled trial provide evidence that television viewing is a cause of increased body fatness and that reducing television viewing is a promising strategy for preventing childhood obesity.

Feeding the World is a sizable volume that covers the nature of current foor problems; the scientific underpinnings of food production, including their environmental implications; a delineation of the various resource bases that serve agriculture; the basics of food comsumption, diets, and nutrition; the role of animal products; an assessment of postharvest losses; and an analysis of China's future capacity to feed itself.

The Evolving Sphere of Food Security seeks to answer two important questions: How do the priorities and challenges of achieving food security change over time as countries develop economically? And how do the policies used to promote food security in one country affect nutrition, food access, natural resources, and national security in other countries? The volume presents the many faces and facets of food security—their symptoms, their roots, and their possible remedies—through the lens of a multidisciplinary group of scholars. The authors share personal stories of research and policy advising from their field experiences to provide readers with a real-world sense of the opportunities and challenges involved in promoting food security at local to global scales. Their observations from countries around the world demonstrate how food security is tied to security of many other kinds: energy, water, health, climate, the environment, and national security. The book’s main goal is to connect these areas in a way that tells an integrated story about human lives, resource use, and the policy process—a story about global food security.

Selected by the editors of Contemporary Pediatrics as the most significant pediatric study of 1999. Also first printed in 1999, v 282, p1561-1567 JAMA

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Because there is wide variation in case-mix adjusted outcomes across dialysis facilities, it is possible that top-performing facilities use practices not shared by others. We sought to catalogue "best practices" that may account for interfacility variations in outcomes. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS: This multidisciplinary study identified candidate best practices in dialysis through a staged process, including systematic review, cognitive interviews, and a national "virtual focus group" of dialysis providers. The resulting candidate practices were rank-ordered by perceived importance as determined by mean RAND Appropriateness Scores from a national survey of nephrologists, nurses, and opinion leaders. RESULTS: A total of 155 candidate best practices were identified. Among these, respondents believed dialysis outcomes are most strongly related to 1) characteristics of multidisciplinary care conferences, 2) technician proficiency in protecting vascular access, 3) training of nurses to provide education in fluid management, vascular access, and nutrition, 4) use of random and blinded audits of staff performance, and 5) communication and teamwork among staff. In contrast, there was wide disagreement about the importance of facility-based health maintenance practices, optimal staffing ratios, frequency of dialysis-based physician visits, and optimal frequency of multidisciplinary care. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a "conceptual map" of candidate dialysis best practices and highlights areas of general agreement and disagreement. These findings can help the dialysis community think critically about what may define "best practice" and provide targets for future research in quality improvement.

BACKGROUND: Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for several chronic oxidative diseases that can be ameliorated by antioxidants.

OBJECTIVES: This study identified the typical dietary intakes and the major food group contributors of the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E by smoking status.

DESIGN: The 1994-1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII) provided the current sample (n = 6749), who were categorized as non- (n = 3231), former (n = 1684), and current (n = 1834) smokers. In the CSFII, individuals' food intakes were estimated with two 24-h dietary recalls. Data were analyzed by using a chi-square test with a simultaneous Fisher's z test, analysis of variance with Scheffe's test, multivariate analysis of covariance, and analysis of covariance with Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons.

RESULTS: The sample consisted of 3707 men and 3042 women. Current smokers tended to be younger with less education and lower incomes than nonsmokers and former smokers. The average body mass index (in kg/m(2)) of current smokers was 25.8, the lowest of the 3 groups. Current smokers had the lowest dietary antioxidant intake. Fatty foods such as luncheon meats, condiments and salad dressings, and ground beef contributed more to the antioxidant intakes of current smokers than to those of the other 2 groups, whereas fruit and vegetables contributed less. Current smokers consumed the fewest numbers of servings of all nutrient-bearing groups in the food guide pyramid, except the meat group.

CONCLUSION: Future interventions should target the clustering of cigarette smoking and other unhealthy lifestyle habits, eg, an imprudent diet.