Question 3
Do you believe it would be beneficial to reproduce this study in the United States? Why or why not?
posted by SarahU @ 4:41 PM
31 comments
ISU Dietetic Internship Journal Club
Objective: To become familiar with current scientific literature on a variety of nutrition topics and to gain experience in gathering, organizing, critically evaluating, presenting and facilitating group discussion of the literature and the implications to practice.
31 Comments:
I believe that reproducing the study in the US would be beneficial to determine whether the results are supported. However, I believe that researchers will have much more difficulty with compliance to the Mediterranean Diet. The foods emphasized in this diet are abundant in Athens, but not in many regions of the United States. Additionally, these foods are more expensive in the US in certain areas, and not common in a typical 'American' diet.
I believe it would be beneficial to reproduce this study in the US, but I also think that it could be altered to include a wider age range of children and more variables, such as overall unhealthy snacks and other health conditions besides asthma. I’m not sure if salty-snacks are directly correlated to asthma, or if it’s the inactivity and weight gain that may lead to asthma. It would be interesting to see the results if this study were to be reproduced.
I don't think that reproducing this study would be beneficial but perhaps a variation of it. Is it the snacks, the tv, the obesity or a combination that is increasing asthma occurrences? I would be interested to see the obesity rates and how they relate to the asthma occurrences in children here in the US.
Sarah, I agree with you, I think that if this study was reproduced here the Mediterranean Diet would need to be looked at and possibly changed or removed from the study because I would imagine it would be very low compliance.
I do think it would be beneficial to reproduce the study in the US. This study can not necessarily be applied to youth in the US because it was conducted using youth in Greece. These participants will have different cultural and dietary practices than children in the US. It would be important to modify the questionnaires, mainly the FFQ, to accurately reflect the dietary patterns of US children. Also, I don’t think including the components about the Mediterranean Diet would be appropriate. I think this study is very informative and sheds light on an under-researched area, but to be applicable to children in the US it would need to be reproduced.
I definitely think that this study would be beneficial if it were reproduced in the U.S. However, the "salty" snack foods that the children in Athens were consuming need to be evaluated for sodium content compared to U.S. brands of "salty" snack foods. I'm sure that some of the most popular brands of snack foods may be present in Greece, but it is more likely that there are snack foods central to that area that are the "popular" choice and may vary in sodium content compared to the U.S. I also think it would be hard for U.S. participants to comply with the Mediterranean diet principles as it is more second nature for children in Greece, but it could be done.
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I agree with Liz and Stephanie that the connection between asthma and sodium needs to be further researched. Pre-packaged snack foods are typically processed, high in sodium, high in saturated and trans fats, and sugar. The high fat and sugar content of these products cause children to exceed their overall daily caloric needs. In addition, having a higher level of TV/Video game viewing promotes a sedentary life style and thus contributes to childhood obesity, which in turn may be a factor involved in the development of asthma.
I stated in Question 2 that I had a few problems with this study correlating TV watching and salty foods with asthma, but I do think it would be interesting to look at other causes of asthma and add to the survey, maybe also survey for BMI of the children and evaluate the children in the U.S. I would not apply this study to the US population because our diets tend to be very high in salty foods and a Mediterranean Diet is not very common here.
I agree with others on the board that if this study was reproduced many changes should be made for our population, Sarah brought up a good point that in the surveys, many of the foods used in that region of the world would not apply to the US. Overall I think it may be an interesting study if it was tweaked for our population and a correlation between salt/TV/asthma was better supported in the literature
I agree with Melanie that the salty snack foods would have to be evaluated for sodium content and compared to salty snack foods common in the U.S. Rose also made a good point that the Mediterranean Diet used in the study would not be appropriate if it was reproduced in the U.S.
I think reproducing a similar study in the United States would be very beneficial. However, many factors of the study would need to be altered because as many already mentioned, our children's diet is going to be quite different than the children in Greece. Also our children's daily activity would vary compared to those in Greece due to different lifestyles. As we all know the Mediterranean has us beat when it comes to diet and exercise which is why their disease risk is much lower. But if we were to compare perhaps weight, activity level and a food frequency questionaire to prevalence of asthma in US children then the results would definitely be beneficial. Also, I think looking at the prevalence of asthma in children in the US and comparing it to the prevalence of asthma in children in Greece would be very interesting.
I completely agree with Liz that it's most likely a multifactoral situation that is causing these children to have asthma and not just "salty snacks." And Melanie has it right on when she mentioned that the American diet is loaded with all sorts of variables that could affect the overall health of our children, including asthma. Our food supply not only is "salty" but "sugary," "fatty" and full of preservatives and dyes. Plus let's not forget calorically dense with the calories most often than not coming from empty calories. So if we were to reproduce this study in the US there would need to be a lot more variables taken into account.
To some degree, I believe that replicating this study, would be beneficial to the U.S. Some changes to the variables to better fit the lifestyle of this country would need to be developed. One major variable that I believe should also be considered is if the child is living in a household with people who smoke. Studies have shown that living with secondhand smoke is detrimental to the growing lungs of children and worsens the symptoms in children with asthma. Since this factor is so strongly linked to asthma, I think it should be included in a study in the U.S. to find out if is driving the study’s results.
I think Michela has a good point about modifying the study to look at other lifestyle habits that may contribute to Asthma other than salty snack consumption. I agree that there may be other contributing factors such as overweight or obesity and physical inactivity.
Absolutely. I believe that the findings would be more significant if this study were done in the US. Children in the US do not grow up knowing/eating the Mediterranean diet, instead they know the very westernized American diet. The children that would be studied in the US probably eat more unhealthy snacks and watch more television than those children studied in Greece. I believe that same findings would occur, but on a much more significant scale.
I think one of the major limitations in this study was that the researchers were looking at asthma symptoms and not confirmed asthma cases. As stated in the article, this could lead to overestimation of asthma prevalence. This, along with a low adherence to the Mediterrean diet in the US and other factors stated in earlier posts, leaves me thinking that it would not be beneficial to reproduce this study in the US unless it was heavily modified.
I think a similar study may be helpful in the United States. However, since the U.S. is so large in comparison to Greece, one study in one region may not be applicable to another region. Also, as others have pointed out, we would probably shift the focus of the study to body weight or specific health complications such as type II diabetes, and instead of focusing on adhesion to the Mediterranean diet exactly, maybe talk more about F&V in general and inclusion of salty snack or dessert type foods... However, I do think there is value in determining correlation between children's health and their diets/physical activity/screen time; this kind of information may help encourage parents/guardians/school systems to put more of a focus on helping children live healthier lifestyles.
This study would be beneficial to replicate. Like many others said, juts to see if the results are supported. However, I would suggest changing the diet from Mediterranean to following MyPyramid so that it is more applicable in the United States.
"I’m not sure if salty-snacks are directly correlated to asthma, or if it’s the inactivity and weight gain that may lead to asthma. It would be interesting to see the results if this study were to be reproduced."
Liz,
I definetly agree with you. The study should be a little more in depth and I think focus more on weight gain and asthma. I'm still not sure about how salty-snacks are related to asthma, so more in-depth answers would be beneficial.
It would be interesting to see the results of this study in our American youth. I wonder how they would calculate the adherence to a healthy diet since most American children do not follow a Mediterranean diet. It would be beneficial to make that correlation between screen time, salty snack consumption, and the presence of asthma or possibly other risk factors such as BMI, body fat %, or lipid profiles.
Absolutly, this study unfortunatly would find similar results if not worse. This study should help to draw more attention to the growing childhood obesity issue and maybe encourage more parents to step in and start making a difference. Maybe the USA version could have a a BG test and blood pressure to stop some cases of diabetes and hypertention before they start.
I think that the salty-snacks and tv/video game componets of the study are very applicable but I seem to be forgeting the other components of this study the asthma rates and ability to stick the mediterranean diet. I agree with Kathy that to be truely a perfect fit for this country some of the varibles would need to be modified.
I believe it would be beneficial to conduct this study in the United States. A few changes would be necessary instead of using the Mediterranean Diet maybe the food guide pyramid could be used. It would be simple to collect data using the tools at mypyramid. It would be interesting to see how American children compare to the Greek children in this study.
Melanie I agree with you that salty foods consumed would need to be evaluated to see how similar the amounts of sodium are between the countries. It might be helpful for them to assign a similar gram amount so the participants know what qualifies as a salty snack.
I definatly believe this study would be of benefit in the United States. Poor eating habits and inactive lifestyle is a dominating issue in this country and having more information to back the importance of making positive lifestlye choices can do nothing but benefit the health field.
Rose, you bring up a good point that the tools to perform the study would have to be altered to be performed in the United States and also the how applicable the Mediterranean diet would be to this country. I do agree that changes would have to be made to the study protocols.
I do not know the comparison between the two regions in respect to kids watching TV or playing video games. If the statistics are similar, another study would be beneficial to help validate the findings.
Stephanie, very good questions! It could be much better fine tuned. "Is it the snacks, the tv, the obesity or a combination that is increasing asthma occurrences?"
I do believe it would be beneficial. I think that children here are probably more likely to watch TV and play video games and that the diets of American children might even contain more sodium. That being said, I am curious about the prevalence of asthma in this population. Also, if the results of this study were replicated in America, it would make them more valid and perhaps would garner more attention to this issue which could lead to positive changes.
I'm torn about this question. I think the best solution would be to repeat this study in the United States but with a few variations. The Mediterranean diet isn't commonly followed in the U.S. making the original experiement tricky. Finding another diet to replace it would be difficult. I'm honestly not sure of what I would even recommend using as a replacement for the Mediterranean diet.
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