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The aim of the study was to assess food consumption in a group of Roman adolescents in order to compare the energy and nutrient intakes with requirements.The authors have carried out a food survey on the whole scholastic population of two schools of Rome from 2003 to 2005. Nutritional status of students was assessed by measuring height, weight according to international indications. Food consumption was assessed by food records.Seventy hundred and seventy three subjects (773) 52% males, with an average age of 12.3 + or - 0.9 years were surveyed. The average daily intakes of fruit (128 g), vegetables (161 g), and legumes (12 g) were lower than recommended. The percentage of energy intake from fat (39%) and that from saturated fats (12%) were high. On the other hand, the percentage of energy intake from carbohydrates was low (46%) even if that from saturated fats (12%) was rather high. The students' diet was characterized by low intakes of fibre (16 g), calcium (815 mg) and iron (12 mg) in both males and females.Results indicate that the diet of these students is unbalanced in terms of macronutrients and deficient for some micro-nutrients, suggesting the need for nutrition education policy.

The present study examined the cardiovascular health effects of 16 weeks of recreational football training in untrained premenopausal women in comparison with continuous running training. Fifty healthy women were matched and randomized to a football (FG, n=25) or a running (RG, n=25) group and compared with a control group with no physical training (CO, n=15). Training was performed for 1 h twice a week. After 16 weeks, systolic and diastolic blood pressure was reduced (P

The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of overweight/obese and hypertensive roman adolescents belonging to a medium-low social environment. The purpose of this research was also to find out the correlations between high blood pressure and obesity, dietary habits and physical activity.Nutritional status of 474 subjects (age 12.7+/-0.9 years) of a low-medium social class public school was assessed by measuring height, weight and waist circumference according to international indications. Over-weight and obesity were defined by body mass index (BMI) according to International Obesity Task Force (IOTF). Blood pressure (BP) was measured in duplicate and hypertension was defined by international percentiles. Food habits and lifestyle were investigated by a questionnaire. Multivariate logistic regression was used to relate variables.The prevalence of overweight and obese adolescents was respectively 31.7% and 10.3% with a slight higher presence of males in both cases. The whole sample showed a prevalence of hypertension of 10.1%. Systolic and diastolic BP showed a direct association with BMI and waist circumference (P0.01). BMI and systolic and diastolic BP were lower in active students (7 h a week of physical activity). Food habits were not associated with hypertension.The high prevalence of hypertensive adolescents could be explained with the consistent number of overweight/obese subjects, their social medium-low context and their being sedentary. As reported in literature, all these factors may contribute to the ''metabolic syndrome'' aetiology.

New competencies may be learned through active experience (experiential learning or learning by doing) or observation of others’ experiences (learning by observation). Observing another person performing a complex action facilitates the observer’s acquisition of the same action. The present research is aimed at analyzing if the observation of specific explorative strategies adopted in a constrained environment, such as the Radial Arm Maze (RAM), could help young children to explore the maze and to build a cognitive spatial map of the explored environment. To this aim young children were randomly assigned to three groups: children who performed the RAM task following the observation of an actor solving the same maze by putting into action a highly structured exploratory strategy; children who performed the RAM task following the observation of the actor solving the same maze by putting into action a less structured exploratory strategy; children who directly performed the RAM task without any observation. The main result of the present research is that the children who observed the highly structured and correct exploratory strategy spent less time, made fewer errors, exhibited a longer spatial span, and thus they explored the maze more efficiently than the children who directly performed the RAM task without any observation. This finding indicates that when the observed explorative procedure is structured, sequential and repetitive the action understanding and information storage processes are more effective. Importantly, the observation of specific spatial strategies helped the children to build the cognitive spatial map of the explored environment and consequently to acquire/enrich the declarative knowledge of the environment.

Gene variants in MC4R, SIRT1 and FTO are associated with severe obesity and metabolic impairment in Caucasians. We investigated whether common variants in these genes are associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS) in a large group of morbidly obese young adults from southern Italy. One thousand morbidly obese subjects (62% women, mean body mass index 46.5 kg/m(2), mean age 32.6 years) whose families had lived in southern Italy for at least 2 generations were recruited. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs12970134, rs477181, rs502933 (MC4R locus), rs3818292, rs7069102, rs730821, rs2273773, rs12413112 (SIRT1 locus) and rs1421085, rs9939609, 9930506, 1121980 (FTO locus) were genotyped by Taqman assay; blood parameters were assayed by routine methods; the Fat Mass, Fat Free Mass, Respiratory Quotient, Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and waist circumference were also determined. Binomial logistic regression showed that the TA heterozygous genotype of SNP rs9939609 in the FTO gene was associated with the presence of MetS in our population [OR (95% CI): 2.53 (1.16-5.55)]. Furthermore, the FTO rs9939609 genotype accounted for 21.3% of the MetS phenotype together with total cholesterol, BMR and age. Our results extend the knowledge on genotype susceptibility for MetS in relation to a specific geographical area of residence.