Using diet quality and dietary patterns to have positive discussions about nutrition and health

Dr Drew Miller is the Deputy Director of the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. Drew’s research interests involve the study of motor development through games based methodologies and pedagogical quality more broadly in education.

Ms Tammie Jakstas is a qualified Accredited Practice Dietitian and Secondary teacher current PhD candidate at The University of Newcastle, focusing on Food and Nutrition-related Health and Wellbeing in Schoolteachers.

Those interested in knowing more about the study: 
https://uninewcastle.questionpro.com.au/t/ARnRcZRs4K 

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 All right, Welcome aboard, everybody, to another podcast. My name's Dr. Drew Miller. I'm from the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. I'm a member of the Academic Advisory Group and my role 2s at the Uni is that I specialize in experimental studies in, in education and physical education research. But um, and off of that, we've got today I've got with me Tammy Jackson, who's doing a PhD in nutrition and dietetics, um, on food and nutrition and wellbeing for teachers. And we're going to discuss more on that a little later. But Tammy's here today to talk about how to use diet quality as a way of having positive conversations with students about diet and health. So welcome, Tammy. Give us a bit about yourself and why is, um, why is this sort of diet quality? Why is it important topic. Hey, thanks for having me today, Drew. Like you, I also started off as a teacher, although a few technology teacher before moved into dietetics and research and one of the topics that. Would continually come up and still does with teaching colleagues of mine is how to have those positive conversations with students around diet and health and being mindful of the different foods that students might have access to. But die quality is kind of a way that allows us to take a holistic approach to this and look at dietary patterns and diet quality is also used a lot in research, which gives us a lot of resources to be able to have this discussion around diet and health because diet quality is a good correlate. So it has a known relationship with key health outcomes like heart disease, diabetes and as a measure of morbidity and mortality. So in other words, researchers know that if an individual has a good diet quality score, then they're less likely to suffer from poor health outcomes like heart disease and diabetes. So it really gives us a platform to have that conversation. Yeah, right. Well, it sounds an important metric. So let's let's talk about what it actually is. What what is diet quality? How is it measured? Well, diet quality is, as I said, a numerical score. And it looks at the variety of foods a person eats from across all of the food groups. So it's looking at those patterns in eating. So it doesn't just look at, say, how many vegetables I'm eating, but it looks at the variety of vegetables I'm eating as well. And a data quality score can be calculated in a number of different ways. But the most common one that we would come across or that we might use in our classroom is in the form of a food frequency questionnaire. It's a simple questionnaire that just looks at the typical or usual intake of an individual sometimes across the last couple of weeks, but anywhere up to about three months, 3 to 6 months. 1s And these food frequency questionnaires are usually designed for a specific population. So there's so many out there. And in the case of one that we might come across is the healthy eating quiz is one example. And this one was developed by Professor Claire Collins and her team at the University of Newcastle, and it's designed for us, for an Australian population and it follows the values of the Australian Dietary Guidelines. So the diet quality score, just to be clear. So this is a food frequency questionnaire and it allows us to calculate a diet quality score. So the diet quality score within this questionnaire is called The Australian Recommended Food Score, Right. Sorry, a lot of information. That is a lot of information. But but essentially, you're looking at the at the amount that someone is eating and the types of things that they're eating to calculate a score. And it's and it's based on normative data in Australia. So it's it's really based on, on sort of health, health, nutrition aspects, is that right? Correct. So looking at variety across the diet, 1s across the different food groups and frequency. So not just how much, but how much variety we're eating of each different group. Okay, great. And you mentioned you mentioned one there. So the healthy eating quiz, I understand there are any any others or anywhere else we can get resources on these things. Yeah. So as I said, there's a number of resources out there. The only reason I mentioned the healthy eating quiz is because I've had the chance to use it and it's freely available to the Australian population. So using the healthy eating quiz you can jump on and create anybody can jump in and create an account and you get to do the quiz. It will give you your diet quality score, but it also gives you kind of like a report, an overview, and it's linked to the No Money, no Time website, which is a great resource for teachers and just any of us. It has a bunch of articles on. 2s Mainstream research that's coming out, but it also has a really good collection of recipes. Oh, right. I've always good. Was that for a recipe? Or I'd say, why should we be using diet quality this term? Diet quality. So obviously, you know, diet is sometimes a really difficult concept to kind of to work with, as you know, particularly as teachers and, you know, in adolescence. Right? So it can be a bit of a touchy thing. So why diet quality? Let's go there. So with that quality, we're really looking at the patterns of eating. So dietary patterns as a whole. So dietary patterns is probably a nicer term when we're talking about, you know, healthy patterns of eating. So the Mediterranean diet definitely a healthy pattern of eating. And we would have in research a diet quality score that would say, you know, there's many out there actually on the Mediterranean diet. How close am I sticking to the Mediterranean diet? And it gives us kind of a holistic approach to, say, looking at these healthful patterns of eating what is a an overall score of how close a person is to achieving those healthy patterns of eating. Okay. So we're sort of we're moving into that sort of health space rather than, you know, a diet sort of 2s meaning, you know, restriction or, you know, those those kind of, I guess, traditional meanings of the word. Is that that right, that where we're going here? Correct. So you're looking at the 1s dietary patterns, so many foods rather than a single food. It's not demonizing any one particular food. It's looking at, you know, what we eat as a whole because we all eat a variety of different foods each and every day. So it's those patterns and how they kind of work together because we all know foods interact, no foods work on their own in terms of nutrients, and it just gives us a better approach to have that conversation. All right, great. Now, well, let's start to think how teachers might use this a little bit more. So let's start with with the curriculum and then we'll work sort of towards this kind of pedagogical approach where they can use it pedagogically. So let's go with the with the curriculum. Is it. Yeah. What are the links here? Well, when we look at the national curriculum, as I know, this is a national audience. When we look at, say, from 7 to 10 and we look at the competencies and skills around health literacy, and we're asked to look at ways to evaluate different areas of health. So we're looking at from a dietary perspective, so tools that can help us sort of critically analyze and evaluate, but not just evaluate and analyze, but a sort of positive way of reflecting on that information. So, as I said, say using the healthy eating quizlet as an example, you can go in and as I say, create your account, you get your report, but it also then takes you to a dashboard where you get to create 1s or set some key goals. After looking at that feedback and after looking at that report, so say, Oh, fruit and veg. I really like, you know, carrots and peas, but I'm not really adventurous. I need to add more variety. So maybe one of my goals could be over the next three weeks, I'm going to try and add in one new vegetable each week. So it's not about big changes either. It's about those small positive changes and there's a range of different goals set up in that tool or in that platform. And as I said, the recipes. So it also links to suitable recipes that you can maybe use to kind of try and add in more variety. So it's having that. 1s It's using a tool to make positive health decisions in terms of health literacy and how we can interpret it. Yeah. Great. Okay. So what I really like here is that this is a it's a positively focused conversation about, you know, about diet because it's in reference to quality eating. What is quality eating? Am I, you know, how do I move towards what would be considered, you know, quality dietary patterns. So pedagogically that's that's nice. Definitely. And look, as always, a note of caution. When I'm using tools like this in the classroom, we are talking about dietary analysis. So it's always good to just maybe reassess the students in your class before using some of these tools. Um, and, you know, really focusing on that positive approach that we're looking at. Again, the diet as a whole, like you said, and it's more about how we can make this more positive changes and adding more variety to get a better diet quality score. Yeah. Great. Okay. So yeah, some really nice links into the curriculum there and some really, you know, a good a good process there for for teachers to engage with their students in this, you know, in this concept of, of diet quality. So let's talk about your research for for a minute while while we sort of ran things out. But um, so you've got some some current research going. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, we just launched the last study or the final study in my PhD, so it's a longitudinal study. And overall we're looking at the food and nutrition factors or the influence of food and nutrition factors on teachers overall health and well-being. So things like diet quality and how they play a role. Yeah. Right. Okay. So. So why are you focused on students here and not sorry, teachers, I should say, why you focus on teachers and not students here? So teachers often get left out. 1s And we wanted to focus on teachers first because they play a big role in the school environment. So they're not just delivering food and nutrition education. As teachers, we role model healthy practices and we're often the ones asked to deliver food and nutrition interventions, and we're just not given the support or the education to be able to do this confidently. And a lot of research coming out of the US actually shows that in terms of teacher diet, quality, teacher food and nutrition attitudes and health perceptions, these all are correlates. Or again, they have a relationship with the types of classroom food and nutrition practices that we sort of carry out. And as a result, you know, the influence on a student's health and well-being. As I said, a lot of these studies are coming out of the US. We really don't know what's happening here in Australia in terms of food and nutrition in teachers here. Right. Okay. So the eventual aim is obviously to try and improve, improve that amongst teachers, I'm guessing definitely and help support them first and then have those positive flow on effects to student health and wellbeing. Yeah. Well, sounds pretty logical. You've got to you've got to have teachers to, to influence student health and wellbeing. So that's good. Let's keep them around a little bit longer. All right. So, you know, you've got to study up and running, you know, now around this, around teacher food and and nutrition wellbeing. So how can people be involved? Yeah. Look, any high school teachers or secondary teachers across Australia that are currently employed in an Australian school, welcome to participate. And we're asking participants in this longitudinal study to complete one questionnaire at four different time points in the coming year. So this questionnaire, as I said, looks at different aspects of food and nutrition and how it plays a role in a teacher's wellbeing. And if they wanted to participate, they could just if they Google fMRI participate in research. So that's the one to Medical Institute on their research page. It's about the fifth study down. It's called the Teacher Food and Nutrition Related Health and Wellbeing Longitudinal Study. I know a bit of a mouthful. It rolls off the tongue really nicely. Um, and yeah, they will find more information on the study and how to be involved if they would like to. Yeah, great. Okay. Well, thanks. Thanks for telling us about it. And look, thanks for, thanks for giving us some some nice tools and and some some good links to the to the syllabus and a nice sort of pedagogical approach around that around that diet quality with students. That's that's been great. So we'll wrap it up there. But thanks for your time today, Tammy. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Go to.