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Objective:The school food environment (SFE) is an ideal setting for encouraging healthy dietary behaviour. We aimed to develop an instrument to assess whole-SFE, test the instrument in the school setting and demonstrate its use to make food environment recommendations.Design:SFE literature and UK school food guidance were searched to inform instrument items. The instrument consisted of (i) an observation proforma capturing canteen areas systems, food presentation and monitoring of food intake and (ii) a questionnaire assessing food policies, provision and activities. The instrument was tested in schools and used to develop SFE recommendations. Descriptive analyses enabled narrative discussion.Setting:Primary schools.Participants:An observation was undertaken at schools in urban and rural geographical regions of Northern Ireland of varying socio-economic status (n 18). School senior management completed the questionnaire with input from school caterers (n 16).Results:The instrument captured desired detail and potential instrument modifications were identified. SFE varied. Differences existed between food policies and how policies were implemented and monitored. At many schools, there was scope to enhance physical eating environments (n 12, 67 %) and food presentation (n 15, 83 %); emphasise healthy eating through food activities (n 7, 78 %) and increase parental engagement in school food (n 9, 56 %).Conclusions:The developed instrument can measure whole-SFE in primary schools and also enabled identification of recommendations to enhance SFE. Further assessment and adaptation of the instrument are required to enable future use as a research tool or for self-assessment use by schools.

The primary aim of this Systematic scoping review aims to map and describe the current body of scientific literature on culinary nutrition in athletes. The secondary aim is to identify existing gaps in knowledge regarding culinary nutrition in athletic populations.

Athletes train and compete at an elite level during their reproductive years, yet little is known about their experiences during and after pregnancy and how they navigate these stages. This study will explore UK athletes' experiences during and after pregnancy, the support available to pregnant and postpartum athletes and their views on what is needed to support future athletes during their reproductive years.

The primary aim of this systematic review is to evaluate the effect of online culinary nutrition programs on improving the cooking skills of the direct intervention participants. As a secondary aim, in the case of professionals participating in the intervention, to evaluate the effect of online culinary nutrition programs on improving the cooking skills of the patients.

This is the preregistration of the protocol for a scoping review. The objective of this scoping review is to understand how the development of culinary skills in childhood and adolescence happens, as well as to outline the existing concepts in the literature on the subject. In addition, understanding family relationships related to the development of culinary skills in the context of childhood and adolescence.

Nutritional support often focuses on cooking and food skills such as food selection, recipe planning and meal preparation. Individuals with greater cooking and food skills confidence have previously displayed higher diet quality scores and lower intakes of overall calories, saturated fat and sugar. Despite this, the cooking and food skills of team sport athletes have yet to be investigated. This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between cooking and food skills confidence and athletes' demographic characteristics. A validated measure for the assessment of cooking and food skills confidence was distributed via an online survey. Participants were required to rate their confidence on a Likert scale (1 “very poor” –7 “very good”) for 14 items related to cooking skills and 19 items for food skills. Food engagement, general health interest and self-reported fruit and vegetable consumption as a measure of diet quality were also measured. The survey was completed by 266 team sport athletes (male: 150, female: 116, age: 24.8 ± 6.1 years). Group differences were explored using t-tests and ANOVA and associations were evaluated using Spearman's correlation and hierarchical multiple regressions. Athletes' total cooking and food skills confidence was 62.7 ± 17.4 (64.0 ± 17.8%) and 83.8 ± 20.1 (63.0 ± 15.1%), respectively. Females reported greater confidence in both cooking (+20.3%, p < 0.01) and food skills (+9.2%, p < 0.01). Hierarchical multiple regressions explained 48.8% of the variance in cooking skills confidence and 44% of the variance in food skills confidence with gender, previous culinary training, cooking learning stage, general health interest and food engagement all remaining significant in the cooking skills confidence model and cooking frequency, previous culinary training, general health interest and food engagement remaining significant in the food skills confidence model. Male team sport athletes may benefit the most from educational interventions designed to increase cooking and food skills confidence. yes

The overall aim of this study is to investigate food insecurity, food behaviours and management strategies of limited resources, and their associations with wellbeing and diet quality among UK households, including households with children. Secondary analysis of a subset of the sample, those currently pregnant or who have experienced pregnancy in the past 12 months, will be conducted to investigate food insecurity and food behaviours during a key life stage for optimising nutrition. Additionally, initial psychometric and validation testing (EFA, CFA, internal consistency reliability [Cronbach's Alpha] will be conducted on the proposed new measure of confidence in changing food behaviours

Additional file 3. Intervention Components.

Additional file 6. Gender Analyses.

Additional file 1. CONSORT Checklist for Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial.

Additional file 5. Additional Outcomes.

Additional file 7. Logic Model.

Additional file 4. Additional School Analysis.

“Food agency” is one’s ability to procure and prepare food within the contexts of one’s social, physical, and economic environment. In 2018, we used Amazon TurkPrime to field two large national surveys in the United States (US) to examine food agency and several food- and cooking-related factors. The first survey (n = 1,457) was fielded in a national sample of US adults. The second survey (n = 1,399) comprised of parents of 2–9-year-old children. Analyses included hierarchical linear regression to examine factors that explained variation in food agency and used Poisson and generalized linear models to examine the association between food agency and between cooking behavior and dietary intake, respectively. Cooking skills; food skills; and cooking confidence, attitudes, and perceptions explained a high degree of food agency variance. Higher food agency was associated with more frequent cooking of all meals, more frequent scratch cooking, and less frequent cooking with packaged ingredients among both adults and parents. Higher food agency was also associated with higher consumption of vegetables among both adults and children. Food agency encompasses a number of the interrelated factors important for home cooking and is a useful construct for understanding and promoting home cooking behavior. Published version