February 2011 Summary

Everyone had wonderful and thought-provoking answers to the questions this month. Most of the journal club participants agreed that this study would be useful to reproduce in the United States after some adjustments to the different eating habits in America and most agreed that the results of this study need to be replicated before a conclusion can be made about the association between salty-snack consumption, screen-time, and asthma symptoms. The journal club participants also agreed that the members of the population that would benefit the most from learning about these results would be schools and parents or soon-to-be parents.

For question one, the overall response was that it would be difficult to obtain nonbiased results without the parents being involved somehow in data collection. Several participants agreed that comparing responses from the parents and children may be helpful to determine the most accurate information.

Sarah G had a good suggestion of providing the children with a fun way to record their meal information such as Mypyramid or a computer application.

Liz and Kathy also made helpful suggestions to include the school teachers in the data collection because they are with them when they eat at least one meal of the day, if not two and this would remove the parental recall bias.

For question two, the overall response was that the results of this study needed to be replicated before the results were disseminated to the general public on a large scale campaign and that the results of this study and studies like it would be most beneficial for parents and schools since they are the people that are making decisions about what children are eating at a young age.

Michela and Kathy brought up a great point that in educating the public about the results of this study, we need to be careful not to say that consuming salty foods and not being active cause asthma.

Sarah G also brought up a great point that these study results may be even more beneficial for parents of children that already have asthma.

For question three, the overall consensus was that this study would be helpful to reproduce in the United States, but that many variables and data collection tools would need to be modified for the U.S. population since the U.S. is significantly different than Greece. Some of the suggestions were to change the Mediterranean diet variable to Mypyramid or something similar and to alter the FFQ to include foods commonly consumed in the United States.

Melanie P brought up a great suggestion about having a standard amount of sodium be used to determine if a food is salty or not.

Amanda also brought up a great suggestion to include other factors such as the child’s BMI, body fat %, and lipid profile to see if overall unhealthy eating was also a contributor.

Overall, there was a very good discussion this month on how this study could be replicated and how the results of this study and others like it should be presented to the public. This is just one more study that suggests that unhealthy eating and a lack of physical activity is related to health conditions in children.