Automatic academic: working myself out of a job

Guest post by Emma Foster, Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition, Human Nutrition Research Centre, Newcastle University

Since I started working in dietary research I’ve been fascinated by how and why people misreport their dietary intake. Lots of excellent research (by others) has gone into understanding how the hassle of recording food intake, problems with memory and attention (if you are busy doing something else at the same time you may not be paying attention to what you are eating) along with social-desirability bias (am I really going to admit to the nutritionist interviewing me how many doughnuts I ate yesterday!) together tend to result in an under-estimate of energy intake and an over-estimate of those foods seen to be “healthy”.

Much of my research has focused on how we can make it less of a burden and perhaps even an enjoyable experience for volunteers taking part in nutrition research studies. I developed food photographs for portion size estimation with children, so participants don’t need to weigh everything their child eats….and more importantly doesn’t eat but ends up wearing!

Food photographs estimate portion size with children, so participants don’t need to weigh everything their child eats (or ends up wearing!)

More recently I’ve been developing an online 24-hr recall system, which sometimes feels like I’m making myself and other nutrition researchers surplus to requirements! In the “olden days”, when I first joined the Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University, all dietary data was collected by a researcher who went out to people’s homes to interview them about their dietary intake (something I really quite miss). This was followed by day after day sitting at a computer linking the foods and drinks reported to food composition data and weights (which I don’t miss quite as much!). Now with the online recall we are able to collect the data remotely. We send people a URL and login details and the computer system does the rest. It takes them through the previous day, asking for details on foods consumed, getting people to estimate portion size using photographs and checking for forgotten items like butter on toast or sugar in tea. The system automatically does the linking to the food composition data and the weights consumed and the researcher can download the data as soon as the volunteer has submitted their recall.

More beans please. A screenshot from INTAKE24

But surely it doesn’t do as good a job as a highly skilled nutrition researcher such as myself….right? Well it’s not actually that far off! When compared with a traditional face-to-face interview with 180 people the system was found to underestimate energy intake by just 1% on average and average intakes of protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins and minerals were all within 4% of the interviewer-led recall. Perhaps most amazingly people reported enjoying completing the system!

So if you would like to measure food intake as part of your research but can’t afford to employ a nutritionist/dietitian as part of your research team (we’re not cheap) then have a look at our demo on https://intake24.co.uk/demo and drop us an email at support@intake24.co.uk and we can set you up a survey straight away – and it really is free.

400 not out

Posted by Mark Welford, Fuse Communications Officer, Teesside University

This is the 400th post on the Fuse blog and in the spirit of using arbitrary milestones as worthy of note, I thought it was time for some (blog) post-match analysis.

Brian Lara who holds the record for the highest individual score in a Test innings
 after scoring 400 not out against England playing for the West Indies in 2004.

Over the last five-and-half-years, we have had 399 posts, written by 116 authors, and more than 395,000 page views. There has also been a lot of #fuseblog twittering, coffee room chats, and (you surely didn’t think it could be any other way?) blog-related committee discussions.

We even won a UK blog award last year (not that we mention it much!) and were shortlisted in two award categories earlier this year. But shortlisted isn’t winning and on the train back from those awards in April, I contemplated what we could do to improve the blog or - dare I say it - if the blog had run its course, done its job, had its time.

In academia, more than any sector that I’ve worked in (and I’ve worked in a few) you are encouraged to STOP, put down your machete, and climb above the canopy to see if the direction that you’re heading in is getting you to where you want to go. Academics will quite happily interrupt you in mid-flow to ask: ‘so what?’, ‘what impact are we making?’, ‘who are we reaching?’.

Since taking the wheel from blog founder Jean Adams I have enjoyed myself. I have learnt a bit about community and herding cats, I have made some real-life and virtual friends. I have written the odd post, although admittedly not as many as Jean, and I have enjoyed the discipline of having to write 500 -700 words for public consumption (usually when I can’t find anyone else to post).

I think the other writers have enjoyed it too, once they’d got past their initial reservations.

From all of this, I surmise that people value both reading and contributing to the blog. But I don’t have a clear view of who you are. You also seem to be discussing it in some forums. But you aren’t leaving comments on the blog itself. We have had a grand total of 480 comments posted, of which 234 were spam. So that’s 246 sensible comments. From 395,000 views.

So, I would now like to invite you to use the comment box below to post your thoughts on the blog so far. What sort of things do you like? What stuff would you rather we skipped? What would you like more of? Who are you? You don’t need to tell everyone your name, but what got you here? Why are you interested in this blog? What would make you more interested?

It isn’t that tricky:

1. Depending on how you got to this page, you either start typing straight in the white box, or you need to click the orange link “No comments” at the bottom of the post to get the white box to appear.
2. After writing your thoughts, click on the “Comment as” pull-down. If you know what any of the branded options mean, select one. If not, just chose “Name/URL” or “Anonymous”. Then do the ‘prove you’re not a robot’ thing and you’re done.

I’ll get an email. If you’re not flogging Viagra or using a barrage of abuse, I’ll approve your comment and you’ll be published.

And, just before you get to work: thanks. Thanks to the writers, the readers, the reviewers, the commenters, the retweeters, and the lurkers. See you all again at the next arbitrary milestone.

Can we achieve a healthy sustainable diet by 2030?

Guest post by Christian Reynolds, Knowledge Exchange Research Fellow (N8 AgriFood project), Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Sheffield.

I recently attended the REFRESH Food Waste 2017 conference in Berlin. In the keynote speech of the conference, Vytenis Andriukaitis, (Lithuania's European Commissioner and designate responsible for Health and Food Safety) closed with the remark that Europe’s target is to halve food waste by 2030, and asked the audience if the goal of halving food waste is feasible or a fairy tale promise? 2030 is only 13 years away after all!

Likewise, the sustainable development goals are aimed for 2030, these include: ending poverty, ending hunger, increasing good health and well-being, climate action, and ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns – the latter encompassing the aim to halve food waste.

Many of these goals require large changes to production methods and systems, modes of consumption, and general societal shifts on a global scale. This got me thinking about the challenge of shifting populations towards healthy, sustainable diets; is 2030 an achievable and realistic time frame?

Over the last couple of years there have been a few studies discussing how the UK, and global diets need to shift to meet healthy sustainable diets, (I will admit that I also have two in peer review at the moment). Some of my favourite studies currently published are Macdiarmid et al (2012), Green et al (2015), and van Dooren et al (2015). I also recommend reading Dantzig (1990) to get a glimpse of how this field of enquiry began.

These studies use mathematical modelling methods such as linear programming to calculate diets that:

1. are optimised to be sustainable (for most studies this means low in associated greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE));
2. meet the current healthy eating guidelines; and
3. are not ‘unacceptable’ to the population.

This final item is a crucial, as if you do not constrain for palatability, the linear programme will calculate diets that are healthy, but only feature the foods with lowest environmental impacts. For example, Macdiarmid et al (2012) found a diet of 7 foods: whole-grain breakfast cereal, pasta, peas, fried onions, brassicas, sesame seeds, and confectionery to be sustainable and healthy. Stigler (1945) on the other hand proposed the following 7 foods: wheat flour, evaporated milk, cabbage, spinach, dried navy beans, pancake flour, and pork liver. Both of these are very ‘worthy’ but not varied enough diets to pass muster with the general population.

With this acceptability constraint in play, diets that are healthy and have lower GHGE are achievable with as little as 20-40% dietary shift resulting in up to 30% reduction in GHGEs (see Figure 3 from Green et al (2015). The majority of the studies include a reduction in animal products. For instance Macdiarmid et al (2012)’s sustainable diet featured 60% of the current intake of all meat for women in the United Kingdom and 48% of the intake of red meat (see Figure 1 from Macdiarmid et al 2012).

Figure 3. Deviations of optimised diets from current average diet, with associated reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from Green et al 2015

Figure 1. Proportions (by weight) of food groups in the final sustainable diet compared with the average current intake
of women in the United Kingdom (National Diet and Nutrition Survey 2008–2010). from Macdiarmid et al 2012

So are these changes in food consumption and purchase reasonable in a 13-year time period? Can we shift towards a healthy sustainable diet in 13 years?

For a quick check I looked up the rate of dietary change in the historic reports of the Family Food Survey. Looking over 13 year periods from 1945 to 2000, I found differing rates of changes in consumption and purchase for each food item (check out these amazing visualisations of Britain’s diet from 1945-2000, or look at the table I provide below).

Within all the 13 year periods between 1945 to 2000, all food groups have at maximum shifted by over 20%. This is good news, and indicates that change is possible for all food items in the British diet. However, what is less heartening is that total consumption and purchase of meat and meat products has only shifted by a maximum of 40%, while beef and veal consumption has only changed by a maximum of 47%. These rates of change need to be this high - if not higher - if we are to successfully shift toward a healthy sustainable diet.

So are healthy sustainable diets achievable or just a goal? Only time will tell. However, for now, here are some things that we can do to help the shift towards healthy sustainable diets:

1. Focus on the foods that need to shift for both health and sustainability. Studies are finding that we need to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, increase oily fish consumption and reduce red meat and processed meat consumption. These are the main goals that we can work towards across the population.
2. Pick our battles: focus on the foods that people have an appetite to change. From the table below we can see there are some foods that are easier to shift than others, for example starchy foods (a core of many British diets) have had much smaller rates of change than fruits and vegetables. Our relationship is already used to changing fruit and vegetable consumption, let’s focus there instead. 
3. Technology and dietary change is our friend, let’s harness it. As society and technology develops, food consumption changes. Look at the changes in consumption of canned vegetables as better quality fresh vegetables were introduced. Likewise, the reduction in flour consumption as ready-made bread and other starches (rice, pasta, etc.) began to appear in the shops. How can we work with modern technology, such as improved food storage and processing technology, faster food transfer, and the advent of online shopping? Can we make online meal deliveries and food box deliveries lead to healthier and more sustainable diets?

Table: Britain’s diet from 1945-2000

	Maximum 13 year change in food consumption/purchase 1945-2000	Minimum 13 year change in food consumption/purchase 1945-2000
Liquid wholemilk	65.3%	4.4%
Skimmed milk	99.0%	0.0%
Yoghurt and fromage frais	73.0%	0.0%
Total milk and cream	27.8%	4.5%
Natural cheese	23.0%	0.0%
Processed cheese	44.3%	0.0%
Total cheese	44.1%	8.5%
Eggs	67.1%	7.5%
Oranges and other citrus fruit	74.0%	16.1%
Apples and pears	26.9%	10.3%
Bananas	64.6%	9.1%
Total fresh fruit	61.0%	13.0%
Fruit juice	88.4%	25.0%
Total other	50.4%	9.6%
Total Fruit	68.3%	11.4%
Potatoes	38.8%	13.2%
Fresh green vegetables	36.8%	15.2%
Other fresh vegetables	24.5%	7.8%
Canned vegetables	92.0%	11.5%
Frozen vegetables	77.3%	0.0%
Other vegetables and products	42.9%	10.5%
Total vegetables and products	22.2%	6.9%
Bread	33.9%	9.4%
Flour	63.3%	18.7%
Cakes and pastries	60.2%	12.7%
Biscuits	66.0%	4.9%
Break-fast cereal	55.8%	11.4%
Total cereals (excluding bread)	19.9%	5.0%
Bread & cereal products	23.1%	6.4%
Sugar	54.0%	8.6%
Preserves	51.9%	21.3%
Tea	37.9%	9.4%
Coffee	52.3%	15.0%
Total beverages	28.2%	6.0%
Fresh white fish	49.0%	17.2%
Fresh fat fish	65.3%	32.3%
Shellfish	71.7%	38.5%
Cooked fish	61.9%	29.0%
Total fish and fish products	46.2%	6.1%
Butter	67.5%	10.8%
Margarine	82.8%	24.0%
Lard	82.1%	9.6%
All other fats	74.0%	23.4%
Vegetable and oils	64.1%	0.0%
Low fat spreads	53.8%	0.0%
Reduced fat spreads	80.0%	0.0%
Total fats	37.4%	5.0%
Beef and veal	47.4%	19.5%
Mutton and lamb	55.4%	17.6%
Pork	95.8%	27.7%
Bacon and ham	68.3%	7.5%
Pork, bacon and ham	75.9%	11.1%
Poultry	90.0%	15.6%
Sausages	38.0%	8.6%
Total meat and meat products	39.8%	8.6%

Christian Reynolds
Email: C.Reynolds@sheffield.ac.uk
Twitter: @sartorialfoodie


Photo attribution: "2006_04_10 Food waste. Peering into a dumpster at the GI Market." by Taz © 2006: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/sporkist/126526910