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No evidence of growth impairment after forced migration in Polish school children after World War II
(2023)
Background: Migration is omnipresent. It can come hand in hand with emotional stress which is known to influence the growth of children.
Objective: The aim of this study was to analyse whether type of migration (forced or voluntary) and the geographic direction had influenced the growth of Polish children after World War II.
Sample and Methods: A sub dataset of 2,208 individuals between the ages of 2-20, created from data of the 2nd Polish Anthropological Survey carried out in 1966–1969, including anthropometrical data and social and demographic information based on questionnaire, was used to analyse migration effects.
Results: No association could be found between the direction of migration and the height of the children. The confidence intervals of the means of all classified migration categories overlap significantly and the effect size of the influence of migration category on height is ds=.140, which is too low to see any effects, even if there were one.
Conclusion: Neither forced nor voluntary migration in Poland after World War II led to a change in height in children of migrating families.
Purpose
To develop and validate the Expanded Mindful Eating Scale (EMES), an expanded mindful eating model created for the promotion of health and sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional study using self-administered questionnaire surveys on Ochanomizu Health Study (OHS) was conducted. The survey was provided to 1,388 female university students in Tokyo, Japan. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a partial correlation analysis were used to confirm construct and criterion validity. Internal consistency of the EMES was confirmed to calculate Cronbach's alpha.
Findings
The response rate was 38.7 % (n = 537). Mean BMI was 20.21 +/- 2.12, and 18.8% of them were classified as "lean" (BMI < 18.5). The authors listed 25 items and obtained a final factor structure of five factors and 20 items, as a result of EFA. Through CFA, the authors obtained the following fit indices for a final model: GFI = 0.914, AGFI = 0.890, CFI = 0.870 and RMSEA = 0.061. The total EMES score was significantly correlated with BMI, mindfulness, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness and life satisfaction (r = -0.138, -0.315, -0.339, -0.281 and 0.149,p < 0.01, respectively). Cronbach's alpha for all items in this scale was 0.687.
Practical implications
The authors suggest the possibility that practitioners and researchers of mindful eating that includes this new concept can use authors' novel scale as an effective measurement tool.
Originality/value
The EMES, which can multidimensionally measure the concept of the expanded model of mindful eating was first developed in this study.
Body height has traditionally been looked upon as a mirror of the condition of society, short height being an indicator of poor nutritional status, poor education, and low social status and income. This view has recently been questioned. We aimed to quantify the effects of nutrition, education, sibship size, and household income, factors that are conventionally considered to be related to child growth, on body height of children and adolescents raised under urban Indian conditions. Sample and methods: We re-analyzed several anthropometric measurements and questionnaires with questions on sibship size, fathers’ and mother’s education, and monthly family expenditure, from two cross-sectional growth studies performed in Kolkata, India. The first Kolkata Growth Study (KG1) took place in 1982-1983, with data on 825 Bengali boys aged 7 to 16 years; and the second Kolkata Growth Study (KG2) between 1999 and 2011 with data of 1999 boys aged 7 to 21 years from Bengali Hindu families, and data of 2195 girls obtained between 2005 and 2011. Results: Indian children showed positive insignificant secular trends in height and a significant secular trend in weight and BMI between between 1982 and 2011. Yet, multiple regression analysis failed to detect an association between nutritional status (expressed in terms of skinfold thickness), monthly family expenditure and sibship size with body height of these children. The analysis only revealed an influence of parental education on female, but not on male height. Conclusion: We failed to detect influences of nutrition, sibship size, and monthly family expenditure on body height in a large sample of children and adolescents raised in Kolkata, India, between 1982 and 2011. We found a mild positive association between parental education and girls’ height. The data question current concepts regarding the impact of nutrition, and household and economic factors on growth, but instead underscore the effect of parental education.
Twenty-three scientists met at Krobielowice, Poland to discuss the role of growth, nutrition and economy on body size. Contrasting prevailing concepts, re-analyses of studies in Indonesian and Guatemalan school children with high prevalence of stunting failed to provide evidence for an association between nutritional status and body height. Direct effects of parental education on growth that were not transmitted via nutrition were shown in Indian datasets using network analysis and novel statistical methods (St. Nicolas House Analysis) that translate correlation matrices into network graphs. Data on Polish children suggest significant impact of socioeconomic sensitivity on child growth, with no effect of maternal money satisfaction. Height and maturation tempo affect the position of a child among its peers. Correlations also exist between mood disorders and height. Secular changes in height and weight varied across decades independent of population size. Historic and recent Russian data showed that height of persons whose fathers performed manual work were on average four cm shorter than persons whose fathers were high-degree specialists. Body height, menarcheal age, and body proportions are sensitive to socioeconomic variables. Additional topics included delayed motherhood and its associations with newborn size; geographic and socioeconomic indicators related to low birth weight, prematurity and stillbirth rate; data on anthropometric history of Brazil, 1850-1950; the impact of central nervous system stimulants on the growth of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; and pituitary development and growth hormone secretion. Final discussions debated on reverse causality interfering between social position, and adolescent growth and developmental tempo.
‘Nutrition influences height’ has been a common concept for the last decades. Recently, contradictory results occurred when studying the effectiveness of nutritional interventions, questioning the interaction of nutrition and height. Therefore, we hypothesize that, independently of population/country, nutrition does not affect height in children and adolescents. We analyzed data from the study “Young Lives” which was performed in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam to describe the health situation of children. We used linear mixed effect models to analyze the influence of nutrition on height. Furthermore, we used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test if the commonly assumed hypothetical interaction of height and nutrition can be supported by data from low and middle-income countries. Estimates for nutrition on height of linear mixed effect models were about zero and randomly significant or non-significant in all analyzed countries. Furthermore, SEM led to the rejection of the ‘nutrition influences height’-hypothesis, as data did not support the models based on this hypothesis. We do not find evidence for a nutritional influence on height in children and adolescents from low and middle-income countries. The widespread assumption that inadequate diet is reflected in short stature, which all modern nutritional interventions are based on, needs to be critically reviewed.
Common knowledge suggests that growth in height is influenced by nutrition, genetics, health, and environmental and general living conditions. In addition, modern studies showed that also social mobility and dominance within the social group, may significantly affect adolescent growth and final height. The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of popular ideas and beliefs about factors influencing the growth on the biology of child and adolescent growth. We hypothesized that these beliefs are culture-specific and age-dependent. We investigated 307 French and 315 German participants of all age-groups. We collected polarising statements by questionnaire that the participants had to agree or disagree on. French participants see a connection between nutrition and the body height of children. This is different in Germany and may be due to the fact that French food culture is more traditional. Genetic factors were generally overestimated and considered as the most important determinants of longitudinal-growth. The participants denied an influence of disease and social status. Participants over 35 years of age considered adult height to be independent of environmental factors. In conclusion, popular beliefs partly depend on culture and appear to change with age as a result of growing experience.
All you can feed
(2020)
The laboratory mouse is the most common used mammalian research model in biomedical research. Usually these animals are maintained in germ-free, gnotobiotic, or specific-pathogen-free facilities. In these facilities, skilled staff takes care of the animals and scientists usually don’t pay much attention about the formulation and quality of diets the animals receive during normal breeding and keeping. However, mice have specific nutritional requirements that must be met to guarantee their potential to grow, reproduce and to respond to pathogens or diverse environmental stress situations evoked by handling and experimental interventions. Nowadays, mouse diets for research purposes are commercially manufactured in an industrial process, in which the safety of food products is addressed through the analysis and control of all biological and chemical materials used for the different diet formulations. Similar to human food, mouse diets must be prepared under good sanitary conditions and truthfully labeled to provide information of all ingredients. This is mandatory to guarantee reproducibility of animal studies. In this review, we summarize some information on mice research diets and general aspects of mouse nutrition including nutrient requirements of mice, leading manufacturers of diets, origin of nutrient compounds, and processing of feedstuffs for mice including dietary coloring, autoclaving and irradiation. Furthermore, we provide some critical views on the potential pitfalls that might result from faulty comparisons of grain-based diets with purified diets in the research data production resulting from confounding nutritional factors.
Background: Consumption of whole-grain, coffee, and red meat were consistently related to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in prospective cohort studies, but potentially underlying biological mechanisms are not well understood. Metabolomics profiles were shown to be sensitive to these dietary exposures, and at the same time to be informative with respect to the risk of type 2 diabetes. Moreover, graphical network-models were demonstrated to reflect the biological processes underlying high-dimensional metabolomics profiles.
Aim: The aim of this study was to infer hypotheses on the biological mechanisms that link consumption of whole-grain bread, coffee, and red meat, respectively, to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. More specifically, it was aimed to consider network models of amino acid and lipid profiles as potential mediators of these risk-relations.
Study population: Analyses were conducted in the prospective EPIC-Potsdam cohort (n = 27,548), applying a nested case-cohort design (n = 2731, including 692 incident diabetes cases). Habitual diet was assessed with validated semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaires. Concentrations of 126 metabolites (acylcarnitines, phosphatidylcholines, sphingomyelins, amino acids) were determined in baseline-serum samples. Incident type 2 diabetes cases were assed and validated in an active follow-up procedure. The median follow-up time was 6.6 years.
Analytical design: The methodological approach was conceptually based on counterfactual causal inference theory. Observations on the network-encoded conditional independence structure restricted the space of possible causal explanations of observed metabolomics-data patterns. Given basic directionality assumptions (diet affects metabolism; metabolism affects future diabetes incidence), adjustment for a subset of direct neighbours was sufficient to consistently estimate network-independent direct effects. Further model-specification, however, was limited due to missing directionality information on the links between metabolites. Therefore, a multi-model approach was applied to infer the bounds of possible direct effects. All metabolite-exposure links and metabolite-outcome links, respectively, were classified into one of three categories: direct effect, ambiguous (some models indicated an effect others not), and no-effect.
Cross-sectional and longitudinal relations were evaluated in multivariable-adjusted linear regression and Cox proportional hazard regression models, respectively. Models were comprehensively adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, prevalence of hypertension, dietary and lifestyle factors, and medication.
Results: Consumption of whole-grain bread was related to lower levels of several lipid metabolites with saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. Coffee was related to lower aromatic and branched-chain amino acids, and had potential effects on the fatty acid profile within lipid classes. Red meat was linked to lower glycine levels and was related to higher circulating concentrations of branched-chain amino acids. In addition, potential marked effects of red meat consumption on the fatty acid composition within the investigated lipid classes were identified.
Moreover, potential beneficial and adverse direct effects of metabolites on type 2 diabetes risk were detected. Aromatic amino acids and lipid metabolites with even-chain saturated (C14-C18) and with specific polyunsaturated fatty acids had adverse effects on type 2 diabetes risk. Glycine, glutamine, and lipid metabolites with monounsaturated fatty acids and with other species of polyunsaturated fatty acids were classified as having direct beneficial effects on type 2 diabetes risk.
Potential mediators of the diet-diabetes links were identified by graphically overlaying this information in network models. Mediation analyses revealed that effects on lipid metabolites could potentially explain about one fourth of the whole-grain bread effect on type 2 diabetes risk; and that effects of coffee and red meat consumption on amino acid and lipid profiles could potentially explain about two thirds of the altered type 2 diabetes risk linked to these dietary exposures.
Conclusion: An algorithm was developed that is capable to integrate single external variables (continuous exposures, survival time) and high-dimensional metabolomics-data in a joint graphical model. Application to the EPIC-Potsdam cohort study revealed that the observed conditional independence patterns were consistent with the a priori mediation hypothesis: Early effects on lipid and amino acid metabolism had the potential to explain large parts of the link between three of the most widely discussed diabetes-related dietary exposures and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.