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A nutritious diet is critical to the health and development of pre-school children. Children in the UK consume much food outside the home yet day-care food provision is unregulated, and informed by disparate and conflicting dietary guidelines. Factors affecting nursery food provision have been much studied, but less is known about food provision in the child-minder setting. The purpose of this paper is to examine factors influencing child-minders’ food provision.

Qualitative methods were employed, combining participant observation with semi-structured interviews. Participants were selected via purposive and convenience sampling. Eight child-minders from an English borough were interviewed.

The food provided by child-minders was not consistent with dietary guidelines for young children, following menu plans was reported to be difficult, and knowledge about healthy eating guidelines for young children was various. Child-minders reported limited time for food preparation, and problems catering for fussy children. Some child-minders obtained support through an informal peer network group. Only one child-minder reported availing of professional nutritional advice on healthy food provision. Communication with parents about food was considered important, although there was some evidence of discord between providers and parents in dietary objectives.

The study was small in size and regionally based. Due to the local nature of the study, it is not possible to make generalisations to the wider national context. Corroboration of the findings is necessary in a larger study.

Child-minders have a pivotal role to play in the nutritional health and development of young children, and whilst their interest in provision of nutritious food was great, outside support was lacking. Support should include provision of one clear set of authoritative guidelines, practical guidance that accommodates the realities of providing food in the child-minder setting, investment to strengthen support structures at local level and the development of network groups.

Whilst the factors underpinning food provision in nurseries have been examined in various regions of the UK, little attention has been given to child-minder settings. The current study addresses this gap.

This paper aims to evaluate the dietary advice for cardiovascular health in UK running magazines.

A qualitative and quantitative content analysis was carried out on 12 issues (2014/2015) of Men’s Running (MR), Runner’s World (RW) and Women’s Running (WR). Coding of content took place into three themes: diet information, format and cardiovascular health.

Dietary advice comprised 17, 18 and 21 per cent of content in MR, RW and WR, respectively. A Mediterranean dietary pattern (e.g. fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds, wholegrains and legumes, oily fish) was recommended for cardiovascular health and lowering of BP and plasma cholesterol. Single components of this dietary pattern were emphasised combined with advice to alter fat intake and increase intake of antioxidant nutrients and polyphenols, while advice to restrict salt was scarce. There was minimal emphasis on weight control. Information was often presented as single-page compilations of multiple headlines and snippets. Lexical imperatives and magisterial vocabulary connoted learned expertise and citation of experts and journals was common.

Future research may qualitatively investigate how readers interpret and make use of the nutrition information and dietary advice provided in these magazines. A critical question would be to address whether these dietary messages lead to cardio-protective dietary behaviour.

Improved journalistic reporting of emerging nutritional science is also needed. Magazine editors and journalists need to follow reporting guidelines for science and provide more nuanced information.

This research is the first to describe the content and style of dietary content for cardiovascular health in running magazines.

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors associated with body weight gain among British university students who were members of a slimming club.

Student members of a national commercial slimming programme completed an online survey about cooking ability, weight gain, eating habits and physical activity levels. Non-parametric statistical tests and regression analysis were employed to examine factors associated with weight gain.

The data set comprised 272 current students. The majority of students (67 per cent) reported weight gain between 3.2 and 12.7 kg during studying in university: 20.4 per cent reported to have gained >12.7 kg. Students commonly attributed their weight gain to academic stress and nearly all identified with needing support to learn to cook on a budget. Students reporting greatest weight gain had most frequent consumption of ready meals & convenience foods, take-away & fast foods and least frequent consumption of fruits & vegetables. Weight-stable students reported lowest consumption of alcohol and were most able to cook complex meals. Students who reported greatest weight gain reported lower physical activity levels. There were inter-correlations between cooking ability and lifestyle factors. In a multivariate model, low physical activity and frequent consumption of ready meals and convenience food independently predicted weight gain.

Weight gain was inversely associated with diet quality, cooking ability and physical activity with reliance on ready meals & convenience food and low physical activity particularly important. Prospective studies are needed to confirm these cross-sectional associations and to explore how the university setting may contribute to the effect.

The study adds additional perspective to understanding student weight gain at university in that it focuses on a body weight-conscious sub-group of the student population, as opposed to the general population of students.

This chapter presents “what we know” about the application of technology to instruction for students with learning and behavioral disabilities. Information is presented on research-based effective practices in technological interventions for teaching specific academic skills, delivering content at the secondary level and using technology as a tool for assessment. The chapter concludes with a discussion on Universal Design for Learning and the promises this paradigm holds for educating not only students with special needs, but all learners. The chapter begins where parents and teachers typically begin: the consideration of technology.

Goal orientations and classroom goal structures proved to be highly predictive of classroom-related behaviors and academic achievement. The purpose of the present study was to predict students’ classroom behaviors from goal orientations and classroom goal structures and compare those predictions across students with and without learning problems. Participants were 209 typical students and 18 students with learning difficulties/disabilities (LD). Individual goal orientations and perceptions of classrooms’ goal structures were assessed using self-reports. Student behaviors were assessed over five consecutive days during school hours. Using Multilevel Random Coefficient Modeling (MRCM) procedures, results indicated that mastery approach goals and a mastery goal structure were positive predictors of positive affect, student engagement and students’ perceptions of reinforcement from teachers. Mastery avoidance goals were a negative predictor of positive affective states and a positive predictor of both negative affective states and perceptions of punishment. Last, performance approach goals and a performance goal structure exerted deleterious effects on students’ positive classroom behaviors, particularly for students with LD. When matching mastery goals with a mastery goal structure, effects were significantly more pronounced, and in the desired direction, compared to the matching of performance goals with a performance goal structure. Implications of the findings for practice are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the emergence of a global luxury brand industry and discusses previous conceptualisations of luxury brands. In this endeavour, the study illustrates the unique context of luxury consumption, to highlight several developments in extant literature, and to advocate for the advancement of the consumer-centric paradigm of luxury branding.

The study reviews the emergence of a global luxury brand industry, discusses macro-environmental trends that have influenced luxury brand consumption, critically evaluates the existing literature on luxury brands, and offers directions for future research.

The study highlights that luxury brands have emerged as a special form of branding that conveys the unique sociocultural and individual meanings to their adherents. Moreover, it was found that these meanings have been shaped by a number of important cultural, social, and external trends, which call researchers and practitioners to consider the consumer-centric paradigm of luxury branding.

The study calls for a shift in the focus from the characteristics of luxury brands per se, and towards phenomenological experiences and socio-cultural influences, in the pursuits to understand what brand luxury conveys in the broader context of post-modern consumer culture. The study offers two distinct areas for future research to address these developments.

The purpose of this paper is to study and minimize loss of vitamin B₉ in bread during warming protocol.

In this study, warming intensity, warming time, warming device, and bread storage method were selected as the most effective factors on B₉ loss in bread. The variation of B₉ in bread and its loss were studied with orthogonal array design (OAD) using the L₉ optimization matrix.

With a calculated per cent of contribution (P%) of error of 0.38 per cent and according to the analysis of variance, ANOVA, of the fluorescence data, 86 per cent of B₉ was saved by using toaster as the warming device, a bread warming temperature of <200^○F and a warming time of <10min. Fluorescence method evaluated warming intensity and warming device as the most powerful factors affecting the B₉ concentration in bread with corresponding P% of 42.28 per cent and 41.72 per cent, respectively.

In conclusion, heat destroyed significant portion of B₉ in bread during daily warming protocols, and the suggested optimized parameters obtained in this work significantly minimized this loss.

The OAD can be used to effectively evaluate effective parameters on food science investigations.