Exploring the relationship between dietary patterns, eating behaviour and fat taste detection thresholds : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Background: Dietary pattern analysis provides a unique opportunity to explore combinations of food intake in conjunction with factors known to affect dietary intake. Fat taste sensitivity is an emerging correlate of dietary intake and, when impaired, has a proposed role in the dysregulation of dietary intake and eating behaviours. Aim: To investigate dietary patterns, eating behaviours and fat taste detection thresholds in a group of New Zealand European women aged 19-45 years and identify associations between these factors. Methods: Fifty post-menarche, pre-menopausal New Zealand European (NZE) women, (18-40 years) completed a partially validated, semi-quantiative 220-item food frequency questionnaire and a validated Three-factor eating questionnaire. Height and weight were measured to calculate body mass index (BMI) (kg/m2) and a bioeletrical impedence analysis (BIA) was completed to measure body fat percentage (BF%). During sensory testing protocol participants were exposed to increasing concentrations of ultra-heat treatment (UHT) milk/oleic acid (OA) solutions using the three alternative forced choice method (3-AFC). A naïve OA detection threshold was determined at the point where the participant identified the OA solution correctly three times at the same concentration. Dietary patterns were determined using principal component factor analysis. Associations between dietary pattern scores, taste sensitivity, eating behaviour and baseline characteristics were investigated. Results: Three dietary patterns were identified: ‘unhealthy’, ‘healthy’ and ‘snacking’. Most women had low eating behaviour scores for cognitive restraint (90%) and disinhibition (74%). Hunger scores were comparatively higher, only 40% had low scores. Twenty-three participants (46%) were classified as hypersensitive and 54% were hyposensitive to OA taste. ‘Unhealthy’ pattern scores were inversely associated with cognitive restraint (r=.391, P=.005) and positively associated with age (r=.297, P=.036). ‘Healthy’ pattern scores were positively associated with cognitive restraint (r=.418, P=.003), OA taste detection thresholds (r=0.446, P=.001) and BMI (r=.325, P=.021). Women with low ‘snacking’ pattern scores were significantly older (31.7 years (24.7, 40.4)) than those with moderate scores (24.0 years (22.0, 28.1)) (P=.037). No relationship was found between OA taste detection thresholds and eating behaviour. Conclusion: Participants in this study showed a significant link between habitual dietary intake and measures for eating behaviour and fat taste sensitivity. Both ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ dietary patterns were associated with one, or both, of these factors. An unexpected positive association between the ‘healthy’ dietary pattern and fat taste sensitivity indicates a need for further investigation to better understand this relationship. Findings from the current study support the use of dietary patterns to better represent habitual intake in future research investigating fat taste sensitivity or eating behaviour. Key words: Habitual intake, dietary intake, fat taste sensitivity, cognitive restraint, disinhibition, hunge

In adults with multimorbidity, does the provision of social care services have an effect on the use of primary care and secondary care health services?

Objectives: Health and social care is an area of high policy importance in the UK. Integration of health boards with local authority provided social care in Scotland in 2016 is a major structural change in delivery of care. Improvements in service and efficiency are expected and indeed required in an era of declining budgets. Intuitively, health and social care are closely linked, particularly for those with multiple morbidities. However, little is known about the relationship between health and social care services and how usage of one has an impact on the other in terms of outcomes and costs. The study aims to describe the methods that have been used to analyse the relationship between social care, primary care and secondary care services. Findings will inform the analysis of a large linked dataset of health care, social care and benefits data that will investigate the interactions between health and social care, multimorbidity and socioeconomic status. Approach: A Scoping review of literature aiming to identify academic studies that have made an assessment of the relationship between health care and social care. A search of academic databases will be augmented by a search of grey literature aiming to identify the extent, range and nature of studies. Data will be extracted on populations, study designs, results and recommendations. Results will be visualised in charts alongside a descriptive qualitative synthesis. Results: Expected June 2016

Meeting the National Interest through Asia Literacy - An Overview of the Major Stages and Debates

This paper traces the evolution of ideas on the question of how Australians might become Asia-literate. It examines the main phases in those government and non-government reports on Asian languages and studies that called for a national strategy for Asia literacy. As well, it explores the major debates about the place of the study of Asia and its languages in Australian education. It contends that the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) commission and acceptance in 1994 of Asian Languages and Australia's Economic Future, known as the Rudd Report (Rudd 1994), was the culmination of more than three decades of debate and lobbying. Also, it argues that the Rudd Report's ambitious long term plan, aimed at producing an Asia-literate generation to boost Australia's international and regional economic performance, was unprecedented. First, an overview of the significance of the Rudd Report is established. Second, the main stages in those reports and documents that advocated the study of Asia and its languages are identified. Third, the core debates surrounding such phases are traversed in order to establish the contested nature of the context for the study of Asian languages and cultures in Australia, prior to the 1992 COAG brief which commissioned the Rudd Report

Spending on Pets: Tails from the Consumer Expenditure Survey

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. households own pets. There are about 218 million pets in the United States, not counting several million fish. Pet ownership crosses many demographic boundaries, with Americans of different ages and levels of wealth reporting spending on pets. Further, Americans spend a substantial amount of money on the care and feeding of their animals. Americans spent approximately $61.4 billion in total on their pets in 2011. On average, each U.S. household spent just over$500 on pets. This amounts to about 1 percent of total spending per year for the average household. Using information collected in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditure (CE) Diary and Interview Surveys from 2007 to 2011, this article looks at the trends in spending by household or consumer unit, and examines which groups spent the most and the least on pets

Speaking Crisis in the Eurozone Debt Crisis: Exploring the Potential and Limits of Transformational Agonistic Conflict

Agonism as a political theory emphasizes the ontological aspect of conflict in human political interaction. This article aims to shed light on the political practice of agonism – and in doing so on its limits – by viewing 'crisis discourse' as an agonistic political practice. As my analysis of the Dutch Socialist Party and the Freedom Party’s speech in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis shows, crisis discourse aimed to (re)create a ‘people’ and to justify radical change in economic and social structures. Crisis discourse is employed to construct an 'other' that can be based on ethnic and nationalist terms and to justify retroactive application of the law and the stripping of Dutch citizens of their rights. This attention to crisis discourse as an agonistic political practice highlights an unease within agonism itself: where must the agonist accepts limits to the conflict and contestation she so values? The article starts with Chantal Mouffe's answer to this question - her insistence that legitimate conflict must always recognize the shared values of equality and liberty - and proceeds to show that Mouffe's view unnecessarily relies on a deliberative democratic desire for consensus. Other than Mouffe, I draw on Honig’s emphasis of perpetual contestation to propose that the issue of limits can be best answered by reference to the core of agonistic thought: the preservation of the struggle over political norms and processes. It is not shared values or even a shared political space that matters, but that the political space of the ‘people’ – however contested membership therein might be – remains a place that the 'other' can re-ente

Some simple results for the properties of polar fluids

The author's lecture notes concerning the correlation functions and the thermodynamics of a simple polar fluid are summarized. The emphasis is on the dipolar hard sphere fluid and the mean spherical approximation and on the relation of these results to the Clausius-Mossotti and Onsager formulae for the dielectric constant. Previous excerpts from these lecture notes, Condens. Matter Phys., 2009, 12, 127; ibid., 2010, 13, 13002, have contained results that were not widely known. It is hoped that this third, and likely final, excerpt will prove equally helpful by gathering several results together and making these more widely available and recording a few new results.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure