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We study the impact on children's bodyweight of switching from means-tested to universal provision of nutritious free school meals in England. We exploit the roll-out of universal provision across Local Authorities to estimate effects at different ages and durations of exposure, based on nurse-collected, population-wide health data for state school children. Exposure to universal free lunches reduces obesity prevalence and BMI among children aged 4-5 and 10-11, but older children's bodyweights are less responsive than younger children's. We find tentative evidence that effects may be cumulative, as impacts are largest for those exposed to universal free school meals throughout primary school., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: In the aftermath of the COVID-19 public health emergency, it is important to understand the extent of socioeconomic burdens of long COVID, defined as continuation of symptoms after initial infection, including food insecurity., Objective: This study aimed to assess the association between long COVID and family food insecurity among low-income individuals (or any of their family members living with them) who were participants and nonparticipants in public food assistance programs (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP], Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children [WIC], and National School Lunch Program [NSLP]) in the United States., Design: The study used an observational cross-sectional design., Participants/setting: Data on 7151 adults (aged 18+ years), with family income of < 200% of the Federal Poverty line, from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey, were analyzed., Main Outcome Measures: Level of family food security, based on responses to a set of 10 questions measuring family's food security during the past 30 days., Statistical Analyses Performed: Multinomial logistic regression models were estimated to obtain relative risk ratios of marginal and low/very low food security, relative to the base outcome of high food security, for long COVID status. Multivariable models were estimated separately for the full sample and for subgroups of food assistance participants and nonparticipants. A seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) specification was estimated to assess whether the estimates were different across the participant and nonparticipant subgroups., Results: Compared with individuals who never had COVID-19, the adjusted relative risks of experiencing marginal and low/very low food security were 1.42 (95% CI, 1.00-2.02) and 1.43 (95% CI, 1.08-1.91) times higher, respectively, for individuals who had long COVID. Although the adjusted risks were not observed to be statistically significant in the participant subgroup, among nonparticipants, adjusted relative risk ratios were 2.34 (95% CI, 1.43-3.82) and 1.56 (95% CI, 1.02-2.39), respectively. SUR results showed that relationships between long COVID and food insecurity were only different for marginal and not low/very low levels of food security between food assistance participant and nonparticipant groups., Conclusions: Study findings highlight a significantly higher risk of marginal and low/very low- food security among low-income adults who had long COVID, especially those who were nonparticipants in public food assistance programs. Further research is warranted to explore the causal pathways of this relationship for informing policies to mitigate the burden of long COVID., (Copyright © 2024 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: The objective of this study was to evaluate the acceptance of an employer-led free lunch initiative and its effect on health, diet, and attitudes towards health and diet amongst employees in a small workplace in Northern Ireland., Methods: This was a controlled, employer-led pilot intervention, which was evaluated through a mixed methods approach., Results: Seventeen participants from the intervention site and 14 participants from the control site completed all assessments. Post-intervention, there was no difference in change in dietary measures between the sites, except for saturated fat intake during weekdays (IS: - 1.3% of calories, SD: 4.3; CS: 2.8% of calories, SD: 6.6; P -value < 0.05). Qualitative information was summarised to highlight employees' expectations and experiences with the intervention., Conclusion: This study highlights the challenges that need to be considered when implementing a free lunch initiative for staff., Competing Interests: Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests., (© The Author(s). 2019.)

Co-optimization problems often involve settings in which the quality ( utility) of a potential solution is dependent on the scenario within which it is evaluated, and many such scenarios exist. Maximizing expected utility is simply the goal of finding the potential solution whose expected utility value over all possible scenarios is best. Such problems are often approached using coevolutionary algorithms. We are interested in the design of generally well-performing black-box algorithms for this problem, that is, algorithms which have access to the utility function only via input-output queries. We research this matter by focusing on three main questions: 1) are some algorithms strictly better than others when judged in aggregation over all possible instances of the problem? that is, is there "free lunch"? 2) do optimal algorithms exist? and 3) if so, do they have a tractable implementation? For a specific expected-utility maximization context, involving several assumptions and performance choices, we answer all three questions affirmatively and concretely: we provide examples of free lunch; we describe the general operation of optimal algorithms; we characterize situations when this operation has a very simple and efficient implementation, situations when the computational cost can be significantly reduced, and situations when tractability of optimal algorithms might be out of reach.