South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition - Volume 28, Issue 4, January 2015

The year's end coincides with significant milestones in the continued growth of the SAJCN. The Management Board's deliberations during the course of the year have crystalised in the creation of an Editorial Board. The latter will be responsible for the editorial functions of the SAJCN and will consist of the Editor-in-Chief, Deputy Editors, Section Editors and Editorial Board members. Further details will be announced in due course.

Collective and individual greatness are keystones of Health Science education. Enabling prospective healthcare providers to better the quality of life of the population they serve is vital to ensure collective greatness. However, collective greatness can only be achieved once a student is able to attain and retain individual greatness. Self-care, a necessary human regulatory function under individual control, is part and parcel of individual greatness. Healthcare providers can only care for others once they have established, and are able to, care for themselves.

Objectives: Students studying towards a qualification in Health Sciences should have more knowledge of a healthy lifestyle than other university students. However, it has been questioned whether or not these students apply such knowledge. While studies have been conducted on the lifestyle habits of students in general, few have compared the practices of Health Science students with those of other students. The objectives of this study were to compare the eating patterns, alcohol consumption and physical activity of Health Science students with those of other students.

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Design: A cross-sectional study design that utilised an electronic self-administered survey was applied. Data were analysed using SPSS^® and Pearson's chi-square test (p-value < 0.050).

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Subjects and setting: A convenience sample (n = 619), consisting of registered students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, participated, after providing informed consent.

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Outcomes measures: Dietary patterns and frequency of intake, alcohol consumption and physical activity were measured.

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Results: A statistical difference was not reported between the eating patterns, alcohol consumption and physical activity of Health Science students and those of other students. Most of the students exhibited poor dietary behaviour. For example, 65% of Health Science students and 67% of students in other faculties consumed less than one fruit per day, 70% of Health Science students and 64% of other students consumed less than one vegetable per day, while 91% of Health Science students and 93% of students in other faculties consumed less than two glasses of milk per day. Although not significant, fewer Health Science students (4%) than students of other faculties (9%) consumed alcohol more than twice a week. Binge drinking was more common in Health Science students. Forty-eight per cent of the Health Science students indicated that they were physically inactive, compared to 49% of students in other faculties.

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Conclusion: Students studying Health Science do not have a healthier lifestyle than other students. Further theory-based intervention studies to determine the reasons for this behaviour need to be undertaken. Strategies should be developed to encourage behavioural change.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate food insecurity in students in a developing country with high national food insecurity.

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Design: This was a cross-sectional survey.

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Subjects and setting: Registered students at the University of the Free State were invited to participate. Thirty-one thousand and fourteen students were enrolled in 2013. One thousand, four hundred and sixteen students completed a self-administered web-based questionnaire.

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Outcome measures: Food insecurity was assessed using a one-item measure, i.e. the Australian National Nutrition Survey, and a 10-item measure, i.e. the United States Department of Agriculture Community Food Security Assessment Toolkit. Associations of food insecurity with biographical attributes, food procurement measures and coping strategies were determined using the chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis.

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Results: The prevalence of food insecurity according to the one-item measure was 65%. Using the 10-item measure, 60% of the students experienced food insecurity "with hunger", and 26% food insecurity "without hunger". The highest prevalence of food insecurity was in black and coloured, undergraduate, first-generation and male students, as well as in students who were unmarried, unemployed and those relying on loans or bursaries. Using the regression model, the strongest significant predictors of food insecurity were race, gender, being a first-generation student, not having enough food money, having borrowed food money from parents, having asked for food and having sold belongings to obtain food.

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Conclusion: Severe food insecurity in students may be contributing to the high attrition rates experienced by universities in South Africa. Urgent intervention is required, as not having access to enough nutritionally adequate and safe food could be one of the reasons why more than 50% of South African university students never graduate.

Objectives: Breastfeeding is one of the primary strategies used to enhance infant nutrition and improving child survival worldwide. The intention of globally increasing the rate of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) to at least 50% of infants in the first six months of life was stated in the 2014 International Conference on Nutrition Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Post-2015 Development Agenda. This study aimed to explore the infant-feeding practices of mothers and caregivers of infants aged ≤ 6 months in four provinces in South Africa.

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Setting and subjects: This cross-sectional study was conducted in four provinces in South Africa. In total, 40 health facilities were randomly selected in the four provinces and visited, including metropolitan and non-metropolitan health facilities over the geographical area of the provinces. The sample size comprised mothers and/or caregivers of babies aged ≤ 6 months.

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Design: Fixed-format interviews were used in this cross-sectional study on 580 mothers and/or caregivers. The mothers completed 24-hour recall based on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations dietary diversity list, consisting of 12 different food groups, to assess dietary intake and diversity.

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Results: The EBF rate for infants up to the age of six months was 12%. Mothers who delivered full-term babies were most likely to initiate breastfeeding within the first hour of delivery. More than a third of the mothers had ceased breastfeeding by one month (40%, n = 23). The introduction of complementary food took place in 17% of infants during this first month. The minimum standards of dietary diversity were met by one infant only. Different reasons found to influence mothers' feeding practices included needing to return to work (29%) or their studies (12%), the mothers' health status (25%), and perceptions of an "insufficient" milk supply (13%).

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Conclusion: Therefore, new strategies should address these gaps in knowledge with key breastfeeding awareness messages and a special focus on community involvement and participation. There is also a need for the whole nutrition fraternity, including government, academia and development industries, to intervene by developing more innovative approaches to increase the rate of EBF in South Africa.

Objectives: The study examined adherence to infant-feeding choices made by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected mothers at a Nigerian tertiary hospital prior to implementation of the "rapid advice" guideline, i.e. the revised World Health Organisation principles and recommendations on infant feeding in the context of HIV.

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Design: This was a longitudinal descriptive study.

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Subjects and settings: The study was conducted on mother-infant pairs recruited from the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV programme of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Nigeria. Final analyses included 142 mother-infant pairs.

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Outcome measures: Adherence to a prenatal infant-feeding choice and the infant's HIV status at six months of age were determined.

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Results: On enrolment, 73% (n = 103) of the mothers chose exclusive formula feeding (EFF), and 28% (n = 39) exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) for the first six months of life. Of the mothers who chose EBF, the actual practice of EBF declined from 88% at two weeks to 21% at six months, while EFF with correctly reconstituted infant formula decreased from 55% to 8% over the same period. The proportion of mothers who switched over to early complementary feeding increased from 8% at six weeks to 80% at six months in the EBF group, and 2% at two weeks to 92% at six months in the EFF group. Major reasons for nonadherence to their initial choice were fear of the mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV (65%) and non-affordability of the formula (97%) in the EBF and EFF groups, respectively. Factors significantly associated with adherence to their initial choice included having individual prenatal infant-feeding counselling sessions, being married, having a small number of children, being of higher socio-economic status and the mother's educational status. However, only socio-economic status remained significant after logistic regression analysis was applied. The total MTCT of HIV rate was 1% at six months.

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Conclusion: Adherence to either EFF or EBF in this study was low, owing to early breastfeeding cessation and the inability to sustain EFF.

Acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL) is a subtype of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), categorised as AML subtype M3, and is characterised by translocation of the genes between the long (q) legs of chromosomes 15 and 17 [described as t(15;17)(q24;q21)]. There are two different classification systems for AML, namely the World Health Organization (WHO) and the French-American-British (FAB) classifications. The FAB classification divides AML into eight subtypes based on morphology and the cytochemical staining of blasts. The WHO classification is more complicated, since it requires evaluation of the blast cells by molecular analysis and flow cytometry. Classification of the different types of AML is valuable to doctors when deciding on which chemotherapy regimen to use after remission has been achieved since each type may react differently to treatment owing to its different genetic make-up. APL usually has a good prognosis.

ADSA to host International Congress of Dietetics 2020 in Cape Town

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National Nutrition Week promoted through various activities

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Putting Heart Awareness Month on the map

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Social media corner launched as part of ADSA's weekly newsletter

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News from the continuing professional development accreditation desk

The Consumer Education Project of Milk SA

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National Nutrition Week celebrations

With the very successful congress that was held in Sun City in July 2015 still fresh in everyone's minds, SASPEN is going to make the congress presentations available to members in the member's area on the SASPEN website.

The acknowledgement that nutrition is one of the major significant determinants of health has been accepted and acknowledged, and is the focus of many nutritional programmes is to ensure food safety. However, the nutritional component of health is not limited to the availability of food, but also to nutritional information about food. The South African government has implemented a number of measures to provide information to South African food consumers. Among such measures is legislation to enable consumers to make informed choices on what they buy and use, as reflected in the Government Gazette of March 2010 and in the salt-limiting legislation of 2013. According to the World Health Organization, health promotion is defined as the process of enabling people to take control of their lives. Complex health literacy skills are needed to enable that ability.

We attended the South African Association for Food Science and Technology (SAAFoST) Congress held from 7-9 September 2015, and the International Life Sciences Institute Post Congress Workshop. The congress, as well as the workshop, focused on enabling sustainable future health, and what we are going to do about our growing problem of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Dr Nelia Steyn, University of Cape Town, spoke on Food consumption by the South African population: challenges and opportunities. She mentioned that, according to research carried out so far, South Africans are eating too much starch. We suspect that they are also consuming too much fat, fatty meat, and thus excessive energy in relation to their requirements, and too few vegetables. Most restaurant meals predominantly contain protein, starch and fat (thus contributing further to excessive energy intake) and too little or no vegetables or salad. Richard Delate, Managing Director, John Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa, mentioned that the statistics for NCDs are looking similar to or worse than those on acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in 1994, when huge anti-AIDS campaigns were implemented. Further, Lynne Moeng-Mahlangu from the Department of Health also spoke against restaurants encouraging overeating.