scholarly journals Challenges and Considerations When Balancing the Risks of Contaminants with the Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables for Infants and Toddlers

Nutrients ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Callen ◽  
Jatinder Bhatia ◽  
Laura Czerkies ◽  
William Klish ◽  
George Gray

Background: Fruits and vegetables are key to a healthy diet, particularly in children; however, parents may be concerned about contaminants found in fruits and vegetables. Making informed food choices for children requires understanding and balancing the risks of contaminant exposure with the importance of providing a healthy diet. The objective of this work is to identify fruits and vegetables commonly consumed by infants and toddlers; identify potential contaminants in fruits and vegetables; and outline considerations in assessing contaminant risks in food categories with a critical role in a healthy diet. Method: Commonly consumed fruits and vegetables were obtained from the Feeding Infants & Toddlers Study (FITS 2016). The US Food and Drug Administration Total Diet Study was reviewed for contaminant occurrence, and multiple experts were consulted on considerations in assessing risk of certain contaminants. Results: FITS data show eight fruits and nine vegetables account for over 80% of consumption in infants and toddlers. Several contaminants have been detected in fruits and vegetables. Questions to be addressed prior to establishing contaminant guidance were identified. Conclusion: Contaminant guidance for fruits and vegetables consumed by infants and toddlers raises several challenges. Expertise from multiple disciplines is required to find an approach that maximizes public health benefit.

Author(s):  
Jean H. Baker

Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe is a biography of America’s first professionally trained architect and engineer. Born in 1764, Latrobe was raised in Moravian communities in England and Germany. His parents expected him to follow his father and brother into the ministry, but he rebelled against the church. Moved to London, he studied architecture and engineering. In 1795 he emigrated to the United States and became part of the period’s Transatlantic Exchange. Latrobe soon was famous for his neoclassical architecture, designing important buildings, including the US Capitol and Baltimore Basilica as well as private homes. Carpenters and millwrights who built structures more cheaply and less permanently than Latrobe challenged his efforts to establish architecture as a profession. Rarely during his twenty-five years in the United States was he financially secure, and when he was, he speculated on risky ventures that lost money. He declared bankruptcy in 1817 and moved to New Orleans, the sixth American city that he lived in, hoping to recoup his finances by installing a municipal water system. He died there of yellow fever in 1820. The themes that emerge in this biography are the critical role Latrobe played in the culture of the early republic through his buildings and his genius in neoclassical design. Like the nation’s political founders, Latrobe was committed to creating an exceptional nation, expressed in his case by buildings and internal improvements. Additionally, given the extensive primary sources available for this biography, an examination of his life reveals early American attitudes toward class, family, and religion.


Author(s):  
Philip Martin

Why do farm workers become more vulnerable as countries get richer? As countries get richer, the share of workers employed in agriculture falls. In richer countries, hired farm workers do ever more of the work on the fewer and larger farms that produce most farm commodities. These hired workers include local workers who lack the skills and contacts needed to get nonfarm jobs that usually offer higher wages and more opportunities as well as legal and unauthorized migrants from poorer countries who may not know or exercise their labor-related rights. Government enforcement of labor laws depends on complaints, and vulnerable workers rarely complain. The Prosperity Paradox explains why farm-worker problems often worsen as the agricultural sector shrinks and lays out options to help vulnerable workers. Analysis of farm labor markets in the US, Mexico, and other countries shows that unions and fair trade efforts to protect farm workers cover a very small share of all workers and are unlikely to expand quickly. Most labor-intensive fruits and vegetables are eaten fresh. Unsafe food that sickened consumers led to voluntary industry and later government-mandated food-safety programs to ensure that food is safe when it leaves the farm, with protocols enforced by both government inspectors and buyers who refused to buy from noncompliant farms. This food-safety model offers the most promise for a new era in protective labor policies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl L Larson ◽  
Megan Mullaney ◽  
Esther Mwangi ◽  
Deu Xiong ◽  
Frances Ziegler

Food deserts are identified by the United States Department of Agriculture as areas where asignificant proportion of the population lack access to quality food choices. The purpose of this study was toassess the availability of quality fruits, vegetables, dry good, and meats at corner store locations in a south-central Minnesota county designated a food desert. Corner stores (n=22) were audited for the presence of20 fresh fruits and vegetables, low-fat meats, and whole grain dry goods. Results indicate more than three-quarters of corner stores did not provide sufficient access to healthy foods, and were not provide sufficientaccess to quality food for residents in the county.


1999 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Johansson ◽  
Dag S. Thelle ◽  
Kari Solvoll ◽  
Gunn-Elin Aa. Bjørneboe ◽  
Christian A. Drevon

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the importance of social status and lifestyle for dietary habits, since these factors may influence life expectancy. We studied the association of four indicators for healthy dietary habits (fruits and vegetables, fibre, fat and Hegsted score) with sex, age, socio-economic status, education, physical leisure exercise, smoking and personal attention paid to keeping a healthy diet. Data were gathered with a self-administered quantitative food-frequency questionnaire distributed to a representative sample of Norwegian men and women aged 16–79 years in a national dietary survey, of whom 3144 subjects (63%) responded. Age and female sex were positively associated with indicators for healthy dietary habits. By separate evaluation length of education, regular physical leisure exercise and degree of attention paid to keeping a healthy diet were positively associated with all four indicators for healthy dietary habits in both sexes. Socio-economic status, location of residence and smoking habits were associated with from one to three indicators for healthy dietary habits. In a multiple regression model, age, education and location of residence together explained from 1 to 9% of the variation (R2) in the four dietary indicators. Length of education was significantly associated with three of four dietary indicators both among men and women. By including the variable ‘attention paid to keeping a healthy diet’ in the model, R2 increased to between 4 and 15% for the four dietary indicators. Length of education remained correlated to three dietary indicators among women, and one indicator among men, after adjusting for attention to healthy diet, age and location of residence. Residence in cities remained correlated to two indicators among men, but none among women, after adjusting for age, education and attention to healthy diet. In conclusion, education was associated with indicators of a healthy diet. Attention to healthy diet showed the strongest and most consistent association with all four indicators for healthy dietary habits in both sexes. This suggests that personal preferences may be just as important for having a healthy diet as social status determinants.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Wallis ◽  
Anna Powles

Abstract One of President Joseph Biden's foreign policy priorities is to ‘renew’ and ‘strengthen’ the United States' alliances, as they were perceived to have been ‘undermined’ during the Trump administration, which regularly expressed concern that allies were free-riding on the United States' military capability. Yet the broad range of threats states face in the contemporary context suggests that security assistance from allies no longer only—or even primarily—comes in the form of military capability. We consider whether there is a need to rethink understandings of how alliance relationships are managed, particularly how the goals—or strategic burdens—of alliances are understood, how allies contribute to those burdens, and how influence is exercised within alliances. We do this by analysing how the United States–Australia and Australia–New Zealand alliances operate in the Pacific islands. Our focus on the Pacific islands reflects the United States' perception that the region plays a ‘critical’ role in helping to ‘preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region’. We conclude that these understandings need to be rethought, particularly in the Pacific islands, where meeting non-traditional security challenges such as economic, social and environmental issues, is important to advancing the United States, Australia and New Zealand's shared strategic goal of remaining the region's primary security partners and ensuring that no power hostile to their interests establishes a strategic foothold.


Author(s):  
Jude Woodward

This chapter (and the next) look at the US’s recent intervention in the South China Sea and China’s responses. It considers the varying domestic and strategic concerns of these primarily island countries. It analyses the drivers of their responses to the sovereignty disputes in the Sea and to the key US initiative of the TPP. This chapter and the next are linked to the one that follows on Vietnam, which also plays a critical role in the shifting relation of forces in the South China Sea disputes. This is the region where the US has invested most hopes in a dramatic shift in regional alignments against China. These chapters assess the US’s progress, and conclude that – despite its lack of a local ally with anything like the weight of Japan or South Korea and the immense geographic extension of American power involved in maintaining its presence in the region – in some respects the US ’rebalance’ strategies have made more progress here to China’s south than to its east.


Author(s):  
Swapnil Saurav ◽  
Ravi Potti

Cold Chain refers to the transportation of temperature sensitive products like perishable goods from the point of origin to point of consumption in the food supply chain, which keeps it fresh and edible for a much longer period than in normal conditions. Cold Chain helps in transporting seasonal products and also making it available throughout the year. Two main parts of cold chain are transportation and storage systems. The key Indian industries where cold chain logistics play very important role are fruits and vegetables, milk and milk products (ice cream), Poultry and processed meat, marine products, pharmaceutical (mainly vaccines) and chemicals. An efficient cold chain industry ensures availability of food products as well as prevents spoilage of medicines. Country like India, where infrastructure is one of the major challenges, cold chain plays a critical role. Analysis for this study shows that cold supply chain network does not differ significantly from products to products at least in Indian scenario. Some of the challenges to the growth of sector in India are high energy cost, power deficit, rising real estate cost, lack of logistical support and uneven distribution of capacity. All these challenges bring down the operating margin of a company and makes it not so attractive business sector. But during last couple of years there is a positive environment being created for this sector in India. The growth in organized retail, growing interest in horticultural crops, demand for cold chain logistics from Pharmaceutical industry and various initiatives by government are some of the reasons why there is a renewed interest in this sector especially by private sector players. This study, which is focused on Indian cold chain logistics, analyzes the industry on PEST (Political, Economy, Social and Technology) model and presents top 3 factors on each of these 4 parameters.


2012 ◽  
pp. 221-242
Author(s):  
Eric Stice ◽  
Paul Rohde ◽  
Heather Shaw

Chapter 13 includes all of the home and in-session exercises, and handouts used for Project Health. These are Food and Activity Change and tracking sheets, forms for: In-Session Writing Exercises, the presentation on How Society or the Food Industry Encourages Obesity, Letter about the Costs of Obesity, the Top-10 Costs of Unhealthy Foods and Sedentary Behaviors, the Refusing Unhealthy Food/Beverage Practice, Finding Healthy Food choices, Be a Healthy Body Activist, Make an Exercise Plan or Prepare a Healthy Meal, and the Exit Exercise, which involves writing a letter to one's future self about meeting goals for a healthy lifestyle. There are handouts on: calories in beverages, Tips for Eating Out, Exercise and Calorie Expenditure, Healthy Fruits and Vegetables by Color, and How to Deal with Slips.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Miller ◽  
Patrick Webb ◽  
Renata Micha ◽  
Dariush Mozaffarian

Abstract Objectives Meeting most of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) will require a strong focus on tackling all forms of malnutrition─ addressing maternal and child health (MCH) as well as diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Yet, the optimal metrics to define a healthy diet remain unclear. Our aim was to comprehensively review diet metrics and assess the evidence on each metric's association with MCH and NCDs. Methods Using comprehensive searches and expert discussions, we identified metrics that i) are used in ≥3 countries to link diet to health, ii) quantify the number of foods/food groups consumed and/or iii) quantify recommended nutrient intakes. We reviewed and summarized each metric's development, components and scoring. For each identified metric, we systematically searched PubMed to identify meta-analyses or narrative reviews evaluating these metrics with nutrient adequacy and health outcomes. We assessed validity by grading the number of studies included and the consistency of the diet metric-disease relationship. Results We identified 6 MCH, 13 NCD and 0 MCH/NCD metrics. Most were developed for describing adherence to dietary guidelines or patterns, and others were developed for predicting micronutrient adequacy. On average, the metrics included 14 food groups/nutrients (range 4–45), with 10 food-group only metrics and 0 nutrient-only metrics. The most frequent metric components were grains/roots/tubers, fruits and vegetables. We identified 16 meta-analyses and 14 narrative reviews representing 102 metric-disease relationships (98 metric-NCD and 4 metric-MCH relationships, respectively). We found 5 metrics that have been consistently validated in meta-analyses and narrative reviews for NCDs, 1 metric with limited evidence for MCH, but 0 metrics for both. Of the metrics, the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (aHEI), Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), Healthy Eating Index (HEI), and Mediterranean Diet Score (MED) were most commonly validated, especially for all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease (Figure 1). Conclusions Few diet metrics have been used in multiple countries to define a healthy diet. This suggests a serious gap in global analyses of diet quality relating to malnutrition in all its forms, which hinders effective policy action. Funding Sources Gates Foundation. Supporting Tables, Images and/or Graphs


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