Patterns in Vegetable Consumption: Implications for Tailored School Meal Interventions.

BACKGROUND: Vegetable consumption is a challenging behavioral target; consumption rates are below recommended levels and when interventions produce improvements, increases in vegetable consumption are typically a fraction of the change in fruit consumption. We describe vegetable consumption within Ohio school meals and examine how fruit selection, the more popular item, impacts vegetable consumption. METHODS: Fruit and vegetable waste was collected on 11,250 trays from 17 elementary and 16 middle/high schools, using the quarter-waste visualization method. RESULTS: One in 4 students ate at least a one-fourth of a cup of vegetables with their school lunch. Consumption was the highest (30.8%) in elementary school buildings with a majority of regular priced meals. Fruit selection was associated with vegetable consumption (p < .001). Middle/high school students who consumed a fruit were 88% more likely to consume a vegetable as oppose to waste it (95% CI: 1.45-2.42). Fruit selection was also associated with not selecting a vegetable, but the association was of a lower magnitude (odds ratio 1.32; 95% CI: 1.06-1.64). Trends were similar in elementary schools. CONCLUSIONS: Fruit and vegetable consumption should be approached as 2 distinct behaviors with particular attention given to vegetables. Fruit items can be leveraged, though, as a means to encourage vegetable selection.

Group administration influences design but not written word fluency testing.

Quicker assessments of right and left frontal lobe function, such as the examination of performance on design and language fluency tasks, respectively, lend themselves to a group administration setting. However, the influence of social facilitation factors on a dissociation model in these group settings is not well understood. One hundred college students (71 women) completed design and written word fluency tasks while sitting beside a faster or slower working confederate. Questionnaires related to trait worry, emotion regulation, state depression, anxiety and stress were completed following these tasks. Students in the fast condition produced significantly more unique designs, but there was no condition difference on written word fluency. This finding indicated that performance on a design task, which requires relative right frontal activation, may decrease if the subject is paired with a slow working confederate. High trait worriers demonstrated reduced performance on the design task (as indicated by higher design error ratios) but preserved performance on the word task. This supported a single dissociation in that performance on these tasks indicates compromised right hemisphere function and preserved left hemisphere function, respectively, in high trait worriers.