Living through the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impact and Lessons on Dietary Behavior and Physical Well-Being

The aim of this review is to highlight the spectrum on which human behavior has been affected by blanket restriction measures and on a wider scale, the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the human behaviors that have been impacted by the COVID-19 lockdown are dietary behavior and nutrition, food options and food delivery usage, physical activity and sedentary behaviors. This is important in planning effective public health strategies with minimal detriment to all subsets of society as well as improving the distribution of government aid to populations that are more severely affected. Our main purpose is to present the literature from a rapidly growing pool of scientific research to hopefully enable a better and more comprehensive understanding of the effects of this pandemic and the lessons learnt from the accompanying restrictions, as well as policy recommendations that can be made in national pandemic responses in the future.

Dietary Behavior of Drosophila melanogaster Fed with Genetically-Modified Corn or Roundup®

With the rise in concern about GMOs and pesticides on human health, we have utilized Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism for understanding the effects of Roundup-Ready® GMO diets on health. We recorded dietary behavior during and after exposure to a medium containing GMO or non-GMO corn, Roundup® in organic corn medium, and sucrose with or without one of the two Roundup® formulations. No differences in behavior were observed when Drosophila were exposed to a medium containing Roundup-Ready® GMO or non-GMO corn. Drosophila can detect and refrain from eating sucrose containing one Roundup® formulation, Ready-to-Use, which contains pelargonic acid in addition to glyphosate as an active ingredient. Drosophila exhibited dose-dependent increased consumption of sucrose alone after exposure to a medium containing either Roundup® formulation. This may indicate that flies eating a medium with Roundup® eat less and were thus hungrier when then given sucrose solution; that a medium with Roundup® is more difficult to digest; or that a medium with Roundup® is less nutritious, as would be the case if nutritionally important microbes grew on control medium, but not one containing Roundup®.

Cluster Analysis for Identifying Obesity Subrouops in Health and Nutritional Status Survey Data

This study presents the discovery of meaningful patterns (groups) from the obese samples of health and nutritional survey data by applying various clustering techniques. Due to the mixed nature of the data (qualitative and quantitative variables) in the data set, the best-suited clustering techniques with appropriate dissimilarity metrics were chosen to interpret the meaningful results. The relationships between obesity and the lifestyle affecting factors like demography, socio-economic status, physical activity, and dietary behavior were assessed using four cluster techniques namely Two-Step clustering, Partition Around Medoids (PAM), Agglomerative Hierarchical clustering and, Kohonen Self Organizing Maps (SOMs). The solutions generated by these techniques were analyzed and validated by the help of cluster validity (CV) indices and later on their associations were determined with the obesity classes to discover the pattern from the obese sample. Two-Step clustering and hierarchical clustering outperformed the other applied techniques in identifying the subgroups based on the underlying hidden patterns in the data. Based on the CV indices values and the association analysis (obesity factor with the cluster solutions), two subgroups were generated and profiles of these groups have been reported. The first group belonged to the middle-aged individuals who seem to take care of their lifestyle while the other group belonged to young-aged individuals who in contrast to the first group presented a careless lifestyle factor (i.e., physical activity and dietary behavior). The salient features of these subgroups have been reported and can be proposed for the betterment in the health care industry. The research helped in identifying the interesting subsets/groups within survey data demonstrating similar characteristics and health status (i.e., prevalence of obesity with respect to lifestyle factors like physical activity, dietary behavior etc.) which will help to suggest appropriate measures/steps to be taken by the concerned departments to counter them and prevent in the population.

DIGITAL MANAJEMEN ASUPAN CAIRAN PASIEN HEMODIALISIS : LITERATUE REVIEW

Digital recording is a method that has the potential to help chronic disease (CKD) patients undergoing hemodialysis manage problems related to fluid intake. This literature review examines the mobile application intervention for hemodialysis patients, application characteristics, application, effectiveness in changing user behavior, and user satisfaction. The method used is a literature review using articles sourced from electronically based data such as EBSCO, Google Scholar, Pubmed and Scopus with the keywords diet management, fluid status, hemodialysis in the period 2010-2021. The results are five studies describing the evaluation of changes in dietary behavior related to with self-management has a positive change impact. Conclusion: According to the current study, digital recording using an application can hold promise in hemodialysis patients' self-management of fluid intake dietary behavior.

Desired Resources for Changing Diet Among Persons with Multiple Sclerosis: Qualitative Inquiry Informing Future Dietary Interventions

Background: There are approximately 1 million adults in the United States with multiple sclerosis (MS). Persons with MS are interested in diet as a second-line therapy for improving MS symptoms and disease progression. Examination of desired resources regarding diet among persons with MS is necessary for supporting behavior change. Methods: Twenty-five adults with MS completed one-on-one, online semistructured interviews. An inductive, six-phase, semantic thematic analysis was applied for identifying themes associated with participant preferences for dietary behavior change. Results: The research team crafted four key themes from the data that encompassed participants’ desired resources for dietary behavior change. Theme 1, MS-specific evidence, involved the need for clear information about the impact of diet regimens or specific foods on MS. Theme 2, dietary guidelines, was related to guidelines provided by a reliable source such as a registered dietitian. Theme 3, behavioral supports, underscored the need for support for behavior change, including accountability, self-monitoring, motivation, habituation, and incremental changes. Theme 4, diet resources, highlighted tangible resources for supporting dietary change, including recipes, food lists, meal services, or games. Conclusions: This study provides a foundation for guiding dietary interventions for persons with MS that incorporates their needs and preferences and could improve their overall health. Such dietary change can be facilitated by theory-based behavioral interventions that incorporate behavior change techniques such as self-monitoring and goal setting for supporting behavior change.

The Effect of Combined Internet Diet Behavior Intervention On School-Age Children

Background With the development of the economy and the improvement of people's quality of life, the problem of children's eating behavior is a common phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of combined internet dietary behavior intervention on the dietary behavior of school-age children. Methods A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted among school-age children aged 6–12 years and their parents. A total of 480 children participated, 240 in the experimental group and 240 in the control group. The children in the experimental group were given dietary behavior intervention for 2 months. The intervention was conducted through face-to-face lectures and WeChat; the children in the control group did not make any intervention. The school-age children’s eating behavior scale (CSCEBQ) was used to evaluate the eating behavior of all children at baseline and 2 months. The rank-sum test and X2 test were used to analyze the data. Results At baseline, the experimental group and the control group had no significant differences in the scores of the six dimensions of food fussiness, food responsiveness, satiety responsiveness, unhealthy eating habits, external eating, craving for junk food (p > 0.05). After 2 months, in addition to the food preference dimension, the dietary behavior scores of the children in the experimental group were significantly lower than those in the control group in other dimensions (p ≤ 0.01). Conclusions Compared with the control group, the children in the experimental group improved in food fussiness, food responsiveness, unhealthy eating habits, external eating, dietary restriction, craving for junk food. This study increases the knowledge of using WeChat to intervene, and evaluated the impact of using CSCEBQ on children’s diet, and provides a more scientific and effective basis for the clinical intervention of children with eating behavior problems.