Pulmonary disease associated with cafeteria flooding

An illness among office workers, consisting of cough, fever, chills, muscle aches, and chest tightness was associated with water leaks from a cafeteria. Mean single breath carbon-monoxide diffusing capacity (DLCO) of cases differed significantly from that of non-cases. There was a significant decrease in the percent of predicted DLCO with increasing number of symptoms. Testing for precipitating antibodies to microbial agents found in the building revealed no differences between cases and non-cases. DLCO is an appropriate cross-sectional instrument for field investigations of building-associated respiratory disease.     

The cafeteria diet--an inappropriate tool for studies of thermogenesis

Diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) is defined as a regulatory, facultative component of energy expenditure, stimulated by overeating, which helps maintain energy balance. DIT may play a central role in the regulation of energy expenditure and in the etiology of certain types of obesity. Most experiments testing the existence or the mechanisms of DIT have used the cafeteria diet for the purposes of stimulating hyperphagia, a requisite for studies of DIT. Yet such a diet is inappropriate for studies of thermogenesis because its use prevents researchers from obtaining an experimental outcome that can be clearly interpreted. The primary limitation of the cafeteria diet is that its nutritional composition is uncontrolled. The diet is self-selected from a variety of supermarket foods that tend to be high in fat and/or carbohydrate and low in protein, vitamins and minerals. Hence, the diets consumed by the animals are likely to be deficient in protein, vitamins or minerals. There is evidence that dietary deficiency of protein, vitamins and minerals can increase thermogenesis and in protein-adequate diets, the balance of fat and carbohydrate in the diet can also influence thermogenesis with high carbohydrate diets increasing thermogenesis more than isoenergetic high fat diets. Hence, an observed increase in thermogenesis in cafeteria fed animals might be interpreted incorrectly to be the result of increased energy consumption when it is attributable to dietary imbalance or deficiency. Because the diet is self-selected, it is possible for each animal to choose a diet that varies in nutritional composition from that selected by every other animal, so control of dietary intake is compromised.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Sodium and potassium contents of home-cooked and cafeteria foods

Nineteen main meal foods from cafeterias and six from households were analysed for sodium and potassium. Similar home-cooked and commercially-prepared foods did not differ in sodium contents, except for roast beef. In addition to salt, ingredients such as spreads, bottled sauces and stock cubes contributed sodium to the foods. Potassium levels were higher in four of the home-cooked foods, possibly due to more conservative cooking methods and the use of potassium-rich ingredients such as herbs.     

Development and evaluation of the school cafeteria nutrition assessment measures

BACKGROUND: Foods provided in schools represent a substantial portion of US children's dietary intake; however, the school food environment has proven difficult to describe due to the lack of comprehensive, standardized, and validated measures. METHODS: As part of the Arkansas Act 1220 evaluation project, we developed the School Cafeteria Nutrition Assessment (SCNA) measures to assess food availability in public school cafeterias (n = 113). The SCNA provides a measure to evaluate monthly school lunch menus and to observe foods offered in school cafeterias during the lunch period. These measures provide information on the availability of fruit, vegetables, grains (whole or white), chips (reduced fat or regular), side dishes, main dishes, beverages, à la carte selections, and desserts, as well as information on healthier preparation of these items. Using independent raters, the inter‐rater reliability of the measure was determined among a subsample of these schools (n = 32). RESULTS: All food categories assessed, with the exception of the side dish and chip categories, had inter‐rater reliability rates of 0.79 or greater, regardless of school type. The SCNA scores encompassed the majority of the possible scores, indicating the ability for the measures to differentiate between school cafeterias in the availability of healthier options. CONCLUSION: These measures allow comprehensive, rapid measurement of school cafeteria food availability with high inter‐rater reliability for public health and school health professionals, communities, and school personnel. These measures have the potential to contribute to school health efforts to evaluate cafeteria offerings and/or the impact of policy changes regarding school foods.     

The cafeteria diet as a tool for studies of thermogenesis

The cafeteria diet involves feeding experimental animals a choice of palatable human food items to stimulate energy intake, and has been used extensively to study diet-induced thermogenesis. In a recent commentary Moore has argued that this feeding regime is inappropriate for such studies because the nutrient composition cannot be controlled, many of the effects seen are due to protein or nutrient deficiency and accurate measurements of energy intake are difficult to achieve. We argue that all of these criticisms can be overcome by careful use of the feeding regime and well-controlled experiments. Gross nutrient composition of cafeteria diets can be modified over a wide range, and such studies demonstrate that the effects of protein deficiency can be clearly dissociated from those of hyperphagia. There is no experimental evidence for nutritional deficiency in cafeteria-fed animals even over very long periods of time. Furthermore, the alternatives suggested by Moore, i.e., presenting sucrose solutions to drink or high fat diets, suffer the same drawbacks of altered and often uncontrolled nutrient intake and yet produce little or no increase in energy intake. Criticism of the cafeteria diet is not justified simply because of its misuse by nutritionally naive experimenters. The value and validity of this feeding regime is further supported by the enormous impact it has made on our understanding of energy balance regulation and thermogenesis.