School food programmes in the Pacific Islands: exploring opportunities and challenges for creating healthier school food environments.

OBJECTIVE: The school setting can provide an environment that supports healthy behaviours, including the provision of food. School food activities, that is, school feeding, are commonplace globally, but not well understood in the Pacific Islands region. The aim of this research is to explore learnings associated within existing school food programmes (SFP), and adoption resistors in those Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICT) without SFP, with the intent of improving current and future SFP interventions. DESIGN: This observational cross-sectional study utilised four facilitated workshop sessions to explore SFP within an existing framework. SETTING: Pacific Islands region. PARTICIPANTS: Fourteen participants representing the education and health sectors from eleven PICT, and two participants representing regional organisations. RESULTS: Most countries reported some form of related policy, but key critical constraints to the use of SFP included local food environments, strategic alignment to organisational priorities, advocacy and organisational leadership, and community and cultural connections and collaboration. There are opportunities for integration of SFP into existing frameworks (i.e. Health Promoting Schools), increased collaboration, greater professional development and awareness activities, improved monitoring and evaluation, improved awareness of SFP and promotion of healthy eating for the wider school community. CONCLUSIONS: Given the current health, social and economic challenges faced by countries and territories in the Pacific Islands region, SFP should be considered as an opportunity for food provision and associated nutrition education for students and their wider community. Further research is needed to understand the critical constraints of SFP in this region and how to support stakeholders to advocate for, develop and sustain SFP that are contextually and culturally appropriate.

Food literacy in Pacific Island countries: a scoping review protocol.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this scoping review is to identify how food literacy is characterized and measured in the context of the Pacific Islands, and describe food literacy initiatives that may inform future policy, practice, and research. INTRODUCTION: "Food literacy" is an emerging term used to describe the knowledge, skills, and behaviors required from individuals, households, communities, or nations to make healthy food choices. Given the complexity of changing food systems and the significant health challenges facing Pacific Island communities, understanding the evidence on food literacy in these communities may contribute to ensuring adequate nutrition for this population. INCLUSION CRITERIA: The scoping review will examine all evidence that broadly defines, describes, measures, or explores food literacy and/or its components in residents of Pacific Island countries and territories, of any age or gender. Evidence on initiatives implemented to improve food literacy within this population will also be considered. Countries will be limited to member countries of "the Pacific Community." METHODS: Key information sources to be searched for publications will include databases CABI, EBSCO, and Scopus, along with Google Scholar and Google for gray literature. Experts from relevant organizations and agencies will be contacted to locate additional sources. Results will be restricted to sources from the previous 30 years, available in English and French. Data will be extracted by two or more independent reviewers using a data extraction tool. Results will be presented with a narrative summary, accompanied by tabulated and/or charted results.

High intake, but not low intake, of CLA impairs weight gain in growing mice.

CLA has a range of biological properties, including effects on lipid metabolism and body composition in experimental animals. The prevalent isomer of CLA found in the human diet is 9c,11 t-CLA, and it is predominantly found in products containing fat from ruminant animals. This study investigated the effect of dietary CLA on energy balance in mice. Synthetic CLA reduced body fat in growing male BALB/c mice in a dose-dependent manner over the range 0.25-1.0% w/w CLA in the diet. Weight gain was also reduced at the highest levels of dietary CLA, being only 5.88 +/- 2.68 g/4 mice (mean +/- 1 SD) after 4 wk of 2.0% CLA in the diet, compared with weight gains of 7.51 +/- 2.22 to 8.17 +/- 2.34 g/4 mice in the 0-0.5% CLA groups. There was no significant effect on weight gain if diets contained 0.5% synthetic CLA or less. These results suggest that high levels of a synthetic mixture of CLA isomers modify energy metabolism and body composition and that high levels of synthetic CLA impair weight gain and reduce body fat pad mass in growing mice.