Parental intentions to implement vegetable feeding strategies at home: A cross sectional study.

In order to increase vegetable intake by children, parents are encouraged to implement strategies that promote trying and eating vegetables at mealtimes. Qualitative studies have previously highlighted barriers parents face in implementing healthy eating practices, such as time, monetary costs and child factors (e.g. fussy eaters). This study aimed to specify the relationships between child and parent factors and their effects on parental intentions to implement vegetable feeding strategies at mealtimes. Parental intentions to implement meal service (serving larger portions, offering variety, serving vegetables first) and experiential learning (repeated exposure, games, sensory play) strategies were examined. Parents (N = 302, 73 male, Mage = 33.5) also explained reasons why certain strategies may or may not work for their child (4-7y). For both types of strategy, higher food fussiness of the child predicted higher parental intentions to implement strategies at home. However, this was competitively mediated by low beliefs that the strategy would work for their child, resulting in weaker overall positive effects on intentions. In the meal service model, parental beliefs that healthy eating is important for their child had a positive, indirect effect on higher intentions, through involved parental feeding practices. However, this was not significant in the experiential learning strategies model. Written parental responses suggest that this may be due to meal service approaches being viewed as easier to implement, with little additional effort required. Increasing parental confidence to implement strategies successfully and managing expectations around successful outcomes of strategies (e.g. tasting, eating) may be important focuses of future interventions to support parents implementing vegetable feeding strategies at mealtimes.

An online study examining children's selection of vegetables at mealtimes: The role of meal contexts, variety and liking.

Associative learning predicts that children expect to eat vegetables together with foods high in carbohydrate and protein at mealtimes. However, choosing to eat and consume vegetables may be less likely if they are presented alongside more palatable, competing foods. This study examined food choices of children (N = 180, 8-11 years, 84 female) in a mealtime context. During an online task, children chose one food for a meal, from a choice of vegetables and either a food high in carbohydrate or protein. Preference was assessed with and without a partial meal stimulus, to test the effect of other foods on the plate. Vegetables were selected more often with a meal stimulus, especially when it consisted of carbohydrate and protein foods, meaning that the vegetable option added nutritional variety to the meal. This effect was moderated by the difference in liking between the food options available. Vegetables were selected more if they were better liked than the competing food option, although it was not necessary that vegetables were better liked if they added nutritional variety to the meal. Food fussy children were less likely to select vegetables, but no other effects of child appetitive traits or parental practices were found on children's food choices. Children may be more likely to select vegetables if they add nutritional variety to a meal and are similarly or better liked than competing food options. Future research could test specific meal configurations which promote children's selection and intake of vegetables at mealtimes.

Utilising an integrated approach to developing liking for and consumption of vegetables in children.

Children eat too few vegetables and this is attributed to disliked flavours and texture as well as low energy density. Vegetables confer selective health benefits over other foods and so children are encouraged to eat them. Parents and caregivers face a challenge in incorporating vegetables into their child's habitual diet. However, liking and intake may be increased through different forms of learning. Children learn about vegetables across development from exposure to some vegetable flavours in utero, through breastmilk, complementary feeding and transitioning to family diets. Infants aged between 5 and 7 m are most amenable to accepting vegetables. However, a range of biological, social, environmental and individual factors may act independently and in tandem to reduce the appeal of eating vegetables. By applying aspects of learning theory, including social learning, liking and intake of vegetables can be increased. We propose taking an integrated and individualised approach to child feeding in order to achieve optimal learning in the early years. Simple techniques such as repeated exposure, modelling, social praise and creating social norms for eating vegetables can contribute to positive feeding experiences which in turn, contributes to increased acceptance of vegetables. However, there is a mismatch between experimental studies and the ways that children eat vegetables in real world settings. Therefore, current knowledge of the best strategies to increase vegetable liking and intake gained from experimental studies must be adapted and integrated for application to home and care settings, while responding to individual differences.

Interventions for Increasing Acceptance of New Foods Among Children and Adults with Developmental Disorders: A Systematic Review.

People with developmental disorders (DD) often display high levels of selective eating, which can result in micronutrient deficiencies. It is therefore essential to explore ways to increase dietary variety in this population. To identify different types of interventions promoting increased acceptance of new foods or dietary variety for DD populations and to determine their effectiveness. Thirty-six studies met criteria for inclusion in the review. Twenty-two types of intervention were identified with 34 studies being reported as effective and 33 of these incorporating components drawn from learning theory. Multi-component interventions centred on operant conditioning, systematic desensitisation and changes to environment and familial practices were reported as effective for individuals.

Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) immunoreactivity in ovarian serous and mucinous neoplasms: diagnostic and prognostic value.

Sixty-two serous and mucinous ovarian tumors, an admixture of benign, borderline and malignant neoplasms, were immunostained for proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), with the monoclonal antibody PC10. The PC10 index, the proportion of cells showing nuclear positive staining, was calculated in each case. All the tumors showed positive immunoreactivity for PCNA. There was no overlap of PC10 counts between benign, borderline and malignant serous tumors but within the mucinous group of neoplasms there was considerable overlap between the counts for borderline and malignant tumors. There was no relationship between the PC10 index and the surgical stage of the malignant neoplasms and the index could not be correlated with patient death. Staining for PCNA does not, therefore, appear to be of any prognostic value in ovarian adenocarcinomas.

Ultrastructure of the human placenta in metabolic storage disease.

Eleven placentae and one fibroblast cell culture from pregnancies complicated by various inherited metabolic disorders, together with five chorionic villus biopsies from pregnancies at risk, were examined for ultrastructural evidence of accumulation of metabolites. Abnormal ultrastructural features were present as early as 10 weeks gestation. Myelin bodies were found in all placental cell types in a case of Niemann-Pick disorder and stromal cells showed marked vacuolation in Hurler's disease. Membranous arrays were occasionally identified in the lysosomes of stromal cells in a case of Sandhoff's disease, together with some myelin body formation in the trophoblast and endothelium. In Pompe's disease, intralysosomal accumulations of glycogen were present in all cell types except syncytiotrophoblast, while in sialic acid storage disorder all placental cells were affected except for the cytotrophoblast. Collagen fibre disorientation and excess associated proteoglycan was seen in a formalin-fixed placenta with Sanfilippo mucopolysaccharidosis, and syncytial vacuolation, caused possibly by delays in fixation, was evident in many specimens. The specimens were collected from different centres and the fixation procedure varied significantly. The most satisfactory results were obtained from chorionic villus sampling in vivo and from pregnancies terminated using aspiration followed by immediate fixation. The importance of liaison with clinicians is stressed in order to obtain optimal preservation of the tissue. This is particularly vital in immature specimens of placenta where abnormal storage product material may not have had time to accumulate.

Do AgNOR counts reflect cellular ploidy or cellular proliferation? A study of trophoblastic tissue.

There is considerable debate as to whether AgNOR counts reflect cellular ploidy or cellular proliferation. Trophoblastic tissue from hydropic abortions and from hydatidiform moles offers an excellent model for analysing this problem. Thus, complete moles show considerable cell proliferation but are diploid, whilst partial moles show markedly less cell proliferation but are triploid: hydropic abortuses are diploid and show no cellular proliferation. AgNOR counts in villous cytotrophoblastic cells from hydropic abortions and from complete hydatidiform moles are similar, but those in partial hydatidiform moles are 50 per cent higher than in either hydropic abortions or complete moles. Thus, in non-neoplastic trophoblastic tissue AgNOR counts are clearly a reflection of ploidy rather than of cell proliferation.

Nucleolar organiser regions in normal, hyperplastic, and neoplastic endometria.

Nucleolar organiser regions (NORs) can be visualised by a silver stain that shows NOR-associated proteins as black intranuclear dots (AgNORs). NORs are loops of DNA that transcribe to ribosomal RNA, and the number of AgNORs is thought to reflect cellular proliferative activity. A study of AgNOR counts in normal, hyperplastic, and neoplastic endometria is reported. The highest AgNOR counts were found in normal proliferative endometrium and in well-differentiated endometrioid adenocarcinomas that were invading the myometrium. A mean AgNOR count of greater than 9 in curettage material from an atypical proliferative lesion of the endometrium is highly suggestive of an invasive neoplasm.

Human placental ultrastructure after in vitro dual perfusion.

Unperfused term placental tissue maintained at 37 degrees C for two hours preserved a major part of its structure while displaying a number of signs of hypoxic damage. Most placentae perfused through maternal and fetal circulations with Krebs-Ringer medium retained their ultrastructural integrity after two or more hours of perfusion.

The human placenta does not contain lipofuscin pigment.

Autofluorescent granules are present in the villous syncytiotrophoblast of the human placenta, most prominently during the first trimester. These granules differ in both size and hue from classical lipofuscin granules, have different staining characteristics, and are shown by electron microscopy to be syncytial lipid droplets. It is concluded that previous reports of the presence of lipofuscin pigment in the placenta are unfounded.