Proceedings of a roundtable event 'Workplace Diet and Health - priorities for researchers and practitioners'.

Understanding how the work environment impacts health behaviours is essential to a life course approach in public health nutrition. A roundtable event 'Workplace Diet and Health - priorities for researchers and practitioners' was held by the Nutrition Society in October 2022. The overarching aims of the roundtable event were to consider (i) the relevance of nutritional wellbeing for employers and organisations, (ii) the research priorities for workplace diet and health and (iii) how researchers and practitioners can work with stakeholders in the development and testing of workplace diet and health interventions and nutritional education. Participants represented a range of stakeholders including dietetic and nutrition professionals working in workplace health, academics and science communication with an interest in workplace diet and health, non-governmental organisations and providers of workplace nutritional health and wellbeing programmes. All roundtable participants agreed that good nutrition and access to healthy food at work was part of corporate responsibility comparable to that of health and safety provision. It was recognised that nutritional wellbeing was not seen as a priority by many companies due to the complexity and wide range of employee health and wellbeing options available and the perceived lack of clear financial benefit. Three priority areas were identified and agreed upon by roundtable participants: (1) strengthening the evidence base to demonstrate the tangible benefit of nutritional wellbeing interventions in the workplace, (2) creating a knowledge exchange hub to share best practices and experiences of working across sectors and (3) expand stakeholder engagement in workplace nutritional wellbeing.

Development of muscle mass and body fat reference curves for white male UK firefighters.

OBJECTIVE: This study describes the development of the world's first suite of firefighter body composition centile reference curves which can be used as both academic research tools and clinical references, to plot and track individual firefighter skeletal muscle mass (SMM) and fat mass (FM) measurements against the representative reference sample. METHODS: The body composition of 497 white male London (England) firefighters was measured by anthropometry and bioelectrical impedance analysis. Smoothed centile curves were then generated for skeletal muscle mass index (SMMI), fat mass index (FMI), body fat percentage (BF%) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR). RESULTS: Between 48 and 62 years, firefighter SMMI is greater than the UK white male age-matched general population by a mean of 0.35 units, although SMMI declines 0.006 units/years faster in firefighters between these ages. This is estimated to translate to a mean decline of approximately 0.6% of absolute SMM per year. Between 40 and 49 years, firefighter FMI is 0.1 units greater than the UK white male age-matched general population, which becomes identical (7 units) between 50 and 54 years. At the 50th centile, WHtR exceeds 0.5 by 39 years reaching 0.55 at 62 years. This contrasts with FMI which remains stable from 47 years. CONCLUSION: Firefighters in this study possess greater FM and SMM compared with the UK general population. SMM appears to decline rapidly within older age ranges. These references offer a novel improvement upon the limitations of BMI and BF% for the benefit of an occupational group at elevated risk of cardiovascular disease.