A 10-week online nutrition and physical activity intervention to encourage competence in making healthful food and eating decisions had a positive, lasting effect on FV intake and maintained baseline levels of physical activity in a population that otherwise experiences significant declines in these healthful behaviors.

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Objective To explore an independent association between self-reported sleep duration and cause-specific mortality. Methods Data were obtained from the Multiethnic Cohort Study conducted in Los Angeles and Hawaii. Results Among 61,936 men and 73,749 women with no history of cancer, heart attack or stroke, 19,335 deaths occurred during an average 12.9 year follow-up. Shorter (≤5 h/day) and longer (≥9 h/day) sleepers of both sexes (vs. 7 h/day) had an increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, but not of cancer mortality. Multivariable hazard ratios for CVD mortality were 1.13 (95% CI 1.00-1.28) for ≤5 h/day and 1.22 (95% CI 1.09-1.35) for ≥9 h/day among men; and 1.20 (95% CI 1.05-1.36) for ≤5 h/day and 1.29 (95% CI 1.13-1.47) for ≥9 h/day among women. This risk pattern was not heterogeneous across specific causes of CVD death among men (Phetero 0.53) or among women (Phetero 0.72). The U-shape association for all-cause and CVD mortality was observed in all five ethnic groups included in the study and by subgroups of age, smoking status, and body mass index. Conclusion Insufficient or excessive amounts of sleep were associated with increased risk of mortality from CVD and other diseases in a multiethnic population.

BackgroundNew methods for assessing diet in research are being developed to address the limitations of traditional dietary assessment methods. Mobile device–assisted ecological momentary diet assessment (mEMDA) is a new dietary assessment method that has not yet been optimized and has the potential to minimize recall biases and participant burden while maximizing ecological validity. There have been limited efforts to characterize the use of mEMDA in behavioral research settings.ObjectiveThe aims of this study were to summarize mEMDA protocols used in research to date, to characterize key aspects of these assessment approaches, and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of mEMDA compared with the traditional dietary assessment methods as well as implications for future mEMDA research.MethodsStudies that used mobile devices and described mEMDA protocols to assess dietary intake were included. Data were extracted according to Preferred Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and Cochrane guidelines and then synthesized narratively.ResultsThe review included 20 studies with unique mEMDA protocols. Of these, 50% (10/20) used participant-initiated reports of intake at eating events (event-contingent mEMDA), and 50% (10/20) used researcher-initiated prompts requesting that participants report recent dietary intake (signal-contingent mEMDA). A majority of the study protocols (60%, 12/20) enabled participants to use mobile phones to report dietary data. Event-contingent mEMDA protocols most commonly assessed diet in real time, used dietary records for data collection (60%, 6/10), and provided estimates of energy and nutrient intake (60%, 6/10). All signal-contingent mEMDA protocols used a near real-time recall approach with unannounced (ie, random) abbreviated diet surveys. Most signal-contingent protocols (70%, 7/10) assessed the frequency with which (targeted) foods or food groups were consumed. Relatively few (30%, 6/20) studies compared mEMDA with the traditional dietary assessment methods.ConclusionsThis review demonstrates that mEMDA has the potential to reduce participant burden and recall bias, thus advancing the field beyond current dietary assessment methods while maximizing ecological validity.

Parents exert a strong influence on their children's diet. While authoritative parenting style is linked to healthier weight and dietary outcomes in children, and authoritarian and permissive parenting styles with unhealthy eating, little is known about the mechanisms that mediate these relationships. Feeding styles are often examined in relation to child diet, but they do not consider the social and physical environmental contexts in which dietary behaviors occur. Therefore, this study examined whether parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) were associated with three specific food-related parenting practices - mealtime structural practices (e.g., eating meals as a family), parent modeling of healthy food, and household food rules and whether these parenting practices mediated the association between parenting styles and children's diet. Participants were 174 mother-child dyads. Mothers (68% married, 58% college graduates, M = 41 years [SD = 6.2]) reported on their parenting practices using validated scales and parenting style using the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire. Children (52% female, M = 10 years [SD = 0.9]) completed two telephone-based 24-hour dietary recalls. Dietary outcomes included the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2010 score, and fruit and vegetables and added sugar intake. Using PROCESS, multiple mediation cross-sectional analyses with parallel mediators using 10,000 bootstraps were performed. Significant indirect effects were observed with mealtime structure and the relationships between authoritative parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = 0.045, p < .05, CI = [0.006, 0.126]), authoritarian parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = -0.055, p < .05, CI = [-0.167, -0.001]), and permissive parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = -0.093, p < .05, CI = [-0.265, -0.008]). Child diet quality is affected by mealtime structural practices. Further examination of the features by which mealtime structural practices serve as a mechanism for parents to support healthy eating among their children may improve children's diet quality.

BackgroundThe integration of body-worn sensors with mobile devices presents a tremendous opportunity to improve just-in-time behavioral interventions by enhancing bidirectional communication between investigators and their participants. This approach can be used to deliver supportive feedback at critical moments to optimize the attainment of health behavior goals.ObjectiveThe goals of this systematic review were to summarize data on the content characteristics of feedback messaging used in diet and physical activity (PA) interventions and to develop a practical framework for designing just-in-time feedback for behavioral interventions.MethodsInterventions that included just-in-time feedback on PA, sedentary behavior, or dietary intake were eligible for inclusion. Feedback content and efficacy data were synthesized descriptively.ResultsThe review included 31 studies (15/31, 48%, targeting PA or sedentary behavior only; 13/31, 42%, targeting diet and PA; and 3/31, 10%, targeting diet only). All studies used just-in-time feedback, 30 (97%, 30/31) used personalized feedback, and 24 (78%, 24/31) used goal-oriented feedback, but only 5 (16%, 5/31) used actionable feedback. Of the 9 studies that tested the efficacy of providing feedback to promote behavior change, 4 reported significant improvements in health behavior. In 3 of these 4 studies, feedback was continuously available, goal-oriented, or actionable.ConclusionsFeedback that was continuously available, personalized, and actionable relative to a known behavioral objective was prominent in intervention studies with significant behavior change outcomes. Future research should determine whether all or some of these characteristics are needed to optimize the effect of feedback in just-in-time interventions.

Aberrant brain reward responses to food-related cues are an implied characteristic of human obesity; yet, findings are inconsistent. To explain these inconsistencies, we aimed to uncover endophenotypes associated with heterogeneity in attributing incentive salience to food cues in the context of other emotionally salient cues; a phenomenon described as sign- vs goal tracking in preclinical models. Data from 64 lean and 88 obese adults who were 35.5 ± 9.4 years old and predominantly women (79%) were analyzed. Participants viewed food-related, pleasant, neutral and unpleasant images while recording electroencephalograph. Late positive potentials were used to assess incentive salience attributed to the visual stimuli. Eating and affective traits were also assessed. Findings demonstrated that obese individuals, in general, do not demonstrate aberrant brain reward responses to food-related cues. As hypothesized, latent profile analysis of the late positive potential uncovered two distinct groups. 'Sign-trackers' showed greater responses to food-related cues (P < 0.001) but lower responses to pleasant stimuli (P < 0.001) compared with 'goal-trackers'. There were proportionally more obese than lean 'sign-trackers' (P = 0.03). Obese 'sign-trackers' reported significantly higher levels of emotional eating and food craving (P < 0.001). By examining the heterogeneity in brain reactivity to various emotional stimuli, this translational study highlights the need to consider important neurobehavioral endophenotypes of obesity.

Genetic variants in bitter-taste receptor genes have been hypothesized to negatively impact health outcomes and/or influence dietary intake and, consequently, could increase the risk of colorectal neoplasia. Using a case-control study of 914 colorectal adenoma cases/1188 controls, we explored associations among colorectal adenoma risk, dietary intake, and genetic variation in three bitter-taste receptor genes: TAS2R38 (rs713598, rs1726866, rs10246939), TAS2R16 (rs846672), and TAS2R50 (rs1376251). Analysis of covariance was conducted to detect trends in dietary intake across TAS2R genotypes/haplotypes. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were estimated by logistic regression to test gene-adenoma risk associations. No significant associations were observed between the TAS2R38 PAV/PAV diplotype or the TAS2R16 (rs846672) polymorphism with the selected diet variables. We observed weak inverse associations between the TAS2R50 (rs1376251) C allele and dietary fiber and vegetable intake (Ps < 0.015). Odds ratios for adenoma risk were not significantly different from the null. Our findings do not support a link between these TAS2R genotypes/haplotypes and dietary intake that could impact colorectal adenoma risk. However, given the paucity of data, we cannot dismiss the possibility that these genes may influence colorectal adenoma risk in other ways, such as through impaired gastrointestinal function, particularly in subgroups of the population.