Eating habits associated with body weight gain in female university students: a UK-based study of Slimming World members

Purpose To examine dietary habits, cooking skills, physical activity levels and perceived reasons for weight gain in relation to levels of body weight gain among university students in the UK. Methodology This study explored factors associated with body weight gain in a cross-sectional on-line study of British university students who were actively trying to lose weight. University student members of a national commercial slimming programme completed an online survey about weight gain, eating habits, cooking abilities and physical activity levels. Chi-Square tests were employed to examine factors associated with categories of weight gain. Findings The dataset comprised 279 current students. The majority of students (67%) reported weight gain between 3.2 and 12.7 kg during university: 20.4% 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 convenience foods, take-away and fast foods, and least frequent consumption of fruits and vegetables and attributed stress as a contributing factor. 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. Research Limitations Prospective studies are needed to confirm these cross-sectional associations and to explore how the university setting may contribute to the effects. Practical Implications Strategies to address students’ reliance on fast and convenience food, avoidance of fruit and vegetables, poor cooking confidence and low physical activity may benefit student health and well-being. Originality The study is unique in that it focuses on a body weight-conscious sub-group of the student population, as opposed to the general population of students

Learning-through-Touring: Mobilising Learners and Touring Technologies to Creatively Explore the Built Environment

Learning-through-Touring uncovers ways in which people interact with the built environment by exploring the spaces around, between and within buildings. The key idea embodied in the book is that learning through touring is haptic – the learner is a physical, cognitive and emotional participant in the process. It also develops the concept that tours, rather than being finished products, are designed to evolve through user participation and over time. Part One of the book presents a series of analytical investigations into theories and practices of learning and touring that have then been developed to produce a set of conceptual methods for tour design. Projects that have tried and tested these methods are described in Part Two. Technologies that have been utilised as portable tools for learning-through-touring are illustrated both through historical and contemporary practices. In all of this, there is an underlying belief that what is formally presented to us by ‘authorities’ is open to self-discovery, questioning and independent enquiry. The book is particularly relevant for those seeking innovative ways to explore and engage with the built environment; mobile learning educators; learning departments in museums, galleries and historic buildings; organisations involved in ‘bridging the gap’ between architecture and public understanding and anyone who enjoys finding out new things about their environment

Designing Participant-Generated Context into Guided Tours

This article presents an interdisciplinary framework for designing participant-generated context into guided tours. The framework has been developed in parallel to practice-led research in the design of mobile learning tours with young people based in London. The article draws on art, architecture and urbanism to outline productive concepts, ‘seeding’ and ‘threading’, which support mobilized learning in tours of the built environment. In this, context is explored as an active and dynamic idea in developing attributes of the mobilized learner in the design of tours around buildings and the built environment

Dietary patterns of university students in the UK: A cross-sectional study

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: University represents a key transition into adulthood for many adolescents but there are associated concerns about health and behaviours. One important aspect relates to diet and there is emerging evidence that university students may consume poor quality diets, with potential implications for body weight and long-term health. This research aimed to characterise dietary patterns of university students in the UK and their sociodemographic and lifestyle antecedents. Methods: An online, cross-sectional survey was undertaken with a convenience sample of 1448 university students from five UK universities (King's College London, Universities of St Andrews, Southampton and Sheffield, and Ulster University). The survey comprised a validated food frequency questionnaire alongside lifestyle and sociodemographic questions. Dietary patterns were generated from food frequency intake data using principal components analysis. Nutrient intakes were estimated to characterise the nutrient profile of each dietary pattern. Associations with sociodemographic variables were assessed through general linear modelling. Results: Dietary analyses revealed four major dietary patterns: 'vegetarian'; 'snacking'; 'health-conscious'; and 'convenience, red meat & alcohol'. The 'health-conscious' pattern had the most favourable micronutrient profile. Students' gender, age, year of study, geographical location and cooking ability were associated with differences in pattern behaviour. Female students favoured the 'vegetarian' pattern, whilst male students preferred the 'convenience, red meat & alcohol' pattern. Less healthful dietary patterns were positively associated with lifestyle risk factors such as smoking, low physical activity and take-away consumption. The health-conscious pattern had greatest nutrient density. The 'convenience, red meat & alcohol' pattern was associated with higher weekly food spending; this pattern was also identified most consistently across universities. Students reporting greater cooking ability tended towards the 'vegetarian' and 'health-conscious' patterns. Conclusions: Food intake varied amongst university students. A substantial proportion of students followed health-promoting diets, which had good nutrient profiles obviating a need for dietary intervention. However, some students consumed poor diets, incurred greater food costs and practised unfavourable lifestyle behaviours, which may have long-term health effects. University policy to improve students' diets should incorporate efforts to promote student engagement in cooking and food preparation, and increased availability of low cost healthier food items

Death of the designer

This paper describes a paradigm for critical observation (or watching skills) in design and technology. This kind of study benefits from an understanding of linguistic theories and interpretation of text – beyond structuralism and semiotics – that moves towards a consideration of the ‘other’ or ‘difference’ in textual analysis. It is this that is explored as a paradigm for developing critical thinking about buildings and the spaces between them in design and technology. ‘The reader or critic shifts from the role of consumer to that of producer … The work cannot be sprung shut, rendered determinate, by an appeal to the author, for the ‘death of the author’ is a slogan that modern criticism is now confidently able to proclaim.’ (Eagleton: 138) Augé’s concept of supermodernity (Augé, 1995), exposes the effect of information overload on our perceptions of space. ‘Solitary contractuality’ confines the user to what the designer wants them to do in a particular space – the designer is at the flight deck controlling uniform connections in a ‘non-place’. Moving away from solitary contractuality into socially organic observation of the built environment is the main theme of this paper – observing how users are productive making place

Located Lexicon: a project that explores how user generated content describes place

This extended conference paper explores the use and potential of location data in social media contexts. The research involved a series of experiments undertaken to assess the extent to which location information is present in exchanges, directly or indirectly. A prototype application was designed to exploit the insight obtained from the data-gathering experiments. This enabled us to develop a method and toolkit for searching, extracting and visualising mass-generated data for open source use. Ultimately, we were able to generate insights into data quality and ‘scale of query’ for emerging pedagogical research in learning swarms and distributed learners

Users as architects: thinking big/reading small

Using the realm of the city to explore new 'ways of seeing' the urban experience raises an important issue of not only who designs the city, but how it is interpreted by those who live in it. This need not be seen as a passive relationship where architects and planners make the big decisions and are therefore central in determining how the city is used. Far from it. This paper explores ways in which users are architects in shaping the future of London. In schools, design often centres on the hand-held product and from here, its associated meanings and values. (There is little reason to focus on the large scale in the D&T orders.) This paper seeks to evidence how a specific view of architecture offers students in Design and Technology opportunities to creatively explore a 'lived-in' relationship with architectural products that differs from analysing the use of smaller scale, everyday products. Research focuses on how theories concerned with analysis of human activity can frame development of 'reading' in design education. As such, this paper reflects part of a wider research brief on language and the culture of design in secondary schools. The city is not confined to the spatial scale of the building, or indeed that of the city itself, but encompasses the whole, multiscalar landscape produced by human activity: from the corporeal to the global, the worldly to the intimate. (Borden et al, 2001

Modelling and development of energy management system in a domestic building: Case study

The paper discusses the modelling and development of an energy management system applied for a domestic building. The model has been created to determine energy requirements and takes into account the building fabric and associated energy losses. A number of scenarios were investigated using the model to demonstrate the energy and cost savings. The energy control system is developed to ensure that all separate components of the system interface with each other with the aim of reducing total energy use. The implementation of the systems for a particular domestic building is considered as a case study

PE to Me: a concise message about the potential for learning in Physical Education

Towards being physically educated in PE, this paper imparts a pedagogical message to school hierarchies; LEAs, Senior Management Teams, Governors, Parents Associations, and indeed, mainstream PE teachers ‘at the chalk face’, about the potential of their subject for intellectual development. PE is not just a fun exercise or a break from learning at school, it is learning in school. PE is a creative and demanding opportunity to think in engaging ways and this poem may be evidence for it. The message within PE to Me is delivered in studentvoice, told here in a sonnet form of poetry. The verse cleverly uses repetition to make a 180-degree u-turn about the fortunes of what PE has to offer during the pupils’ week, or what might be anticipated in PE by these young people. That this kind of intellectual engagement from Primary (Year 6) pupils in PE became their expectation of PE teachers at Secondary school (Year 7-11) can, in our view, only be a good thing for the health and status of PE generally