The immediate effect of maternal control of their daughter's eating is well documented. However, the longterm effect of both maternal and paternal control of eating during childhood on adults' current eating attitudes and behaviors has been a relatively unexplored area. Parents play a central role in shaping the family eating environment, which provides a context for the child's relationship with food for years to come (Birch, Fisher, Grimm-Thomas, Markey, Sawyer & Johnson, 2001). The present study focused on expanding the existing knowledge base concerning parental control over eating. Two hundred sixty-seven female adult participants completed a questionnaire packet designed to measure maternal and paternal restriction and pressure to eat during childhood, family mealtime stress during childhood, current restriction, binge eating, emotional eating, eating from external cues, and current affect during meals. Results indicated that parental pressure to eat during childhood are related to restricted eating, emotional eating, and eating from external cues during adulthood. Family mealtime stress during childhood was related to binge eating, restricted eating, emotional eating, eating from external cues, and negative affect while eating during adulthood. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are presented.

This thesis examines aspects of adolescent family mealtimes and psychopathology among both non-clinical (adolescents and mothers of adolescents) and clinical (adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN)) samples. It contains seven studies employing quantitative methodology, which address three broad aims. First, to examine relationships between aspects of family mealtimes and psychopathology among adolescents. Second, to examine links between family mealtime emotions and psychopathology among mothers of adolescents. Finally, to examine associations between specific parental mealtime interactions and adolescent outcomes during a therapeutic meal session for adolescents with AN. Self-report questionnaires were completed by non-clinical adolescents and mothers of adolescents to examine associations between characteristics of family mealtimes (mealtime environment, mealtime emotions and parental feeding practices) and eating psychopathology, anxiety and depression. In addition, observational analyses were conducted on recordings of the family meal session (session two) of Family-Based Treatment (FBT) for adolescent AN. Key findings from this research include: identifying a new factor structure for the Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire when used in research with adolescents; developing a measure to assess mealtime emotions in both adolescents and their parents; and, identifying the feeding strategies used by parents of adolescents with AN during the family meal session of FBT. Overall, the findings reported on in this thesis suggest that family mealtimes may have an important protective role in adolescent psychopathology. In addition to providing frequent family mealtimes, families should be encouraged to concentrate on the positivity of the mealtime environment and emotional experience, which may help to promote psychological well-being, and lower levels of eating psychopathology among adolescents. In relation to family mealtimes within adolescent AN, the findings increase understanding of the types of mealtime strategies parents use with their adolescent child to encourage food consumption during the family meal session of FBT. Furthermore, the research findings highlight that certain strategies may be effective in promoting eating during the session and weight gain later on in treatment. Consequently, such findings might provide a focus for therapists when supporting and coaching parents during the family meal session.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the lunchtime from a language development perspective. It will compare two preschools with different ways of organizing mealtimes and observe the conversations between teachers and children. It will also study the ways in which a meal is served and how it affects the conversations. In one of the preschools the children eat in a proper dining room where the food is served as a buffet while in the other preschool the children eat in the preschoolarea and the food is served in bowls on the tables. I also want to investigate how two of these preschool teachers reflect on the mealtimes as part of the language development plan. I propose the following questions: Do the preschool teachers think that there are opportunities for language development during mealtimes and as to what is their role in these conversations? Does the manner in which the food is served, whether as buffet or at the tables, affect the conversations between teachers and children? What are the preschool teachers reflection on this? What kind of conversations were observed in both preschools? This study is based on a qualitative method with interviews, observations and audio recordings of mealtime conversations. My theoretical approach to this study is the socio-cultural perspective on learning and development. The result shows that the preschool teachers felt that conversation during mealtimes was a good opportunity to stimulate childrens language development. They also considered their role as role models and conversation leaders and that they were central to how the conversations were steared. When comparing both preschools, it turns out that the way the meals are served affects the character of the conversations and that conversations during the buffet meal contain more breaks and less adult support.

To date, research delving into the narratives of living with dementia during mealtimes is limited. The methodology used is thematic narrative analysis, following the elements of a 3D narrative inquiry space proposed by Clandinin and Connelly (2000). The purpose was to develop stories by reconstructing participants’ experiences to capture insight into how mealtimes change overtime and how adaptations reflect resilience. Two themes and several subthemes were revealed. The first major theme is ‘Developing strategies for positive adaptation’, with four subthemes including reminiscing, incorporating humour, establishing social support, and having hope and optimism. The second major theme is ‘Continuing to learn and adapt’, with three subthemes including focusing on the positive gains and personal growth, balancing past pleasures while adapting to the new normal, and accumulating life experiences. This work serves as a basis for future studies examining into the concept of resilience among families living with dementia in greater depth. / SSHRC

Insulin human inhalation powder, a rapid-acting inhaled insulin, was approved by the FDA in June 2014 for patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. For patients reluctant to start insulin therapy because of fear of injections, insulin human inhalation powder may be an alternative. This article discusses appropriate dosing, use, and monitoring.

This project asks families what mealtime together means to them. The topic of family mealtime appears comparatively infrequently in academic literature, and any meaning that families associate with mealtime has seldom been studied directly. This particular research investigates meanings of the understudied mealtime event by interviewing three or four generations of family members from five different families. Attention is paid to emerging standards of rigor for qualitative research, namely applicability through the selection of families who have a history of practicing a family mealtime tradition, truth value in faithfully representing the interviewees perceptions, and auditability by including detail of the research process. Findings are consistent with the available literature, with survey results, and with folk wisdom. Here are the major findings: As anticipated, the interview families report a decline in meals eaten together. Not anticipated was one important reason for the decline, namely, family adherence to the notion that the individual's freedom to choose takes precedence over the group interest when there is conflict at mealtime. Even so, interviewees affirm their determination to maintain a strong mealtime tradition. Families intend to show love through meal preparation, they value working together, the believe in the spiritual importance of family life, they want to protect the mealtime from outside intrusion, and they like being able to talk about whatever is important to each of them. Mealtime is a time of connection and bonding. Families enjoy being all together as a family. They miss getting together regularly for whatever reasons. And they particularly value their Sunday dinner time. All ages unanimously advise others to adopt a family mealtime tradition. The core assertion is that the family mealtime plays a major role in constructing the family unit.

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This study aims to examine how preschool teachers believe that they are working on democracy and children’s rights at mealtimes in preschool. This study aims to find out if preschool teachers could see obstacle to implementing these meals in a democratic manner. Interviews with preschool teachers are used as method as preschool teachers can share their thoughts and ideas about how they work. The results of the study show that preschool teachers tend to focus on the children to be satisfied and have a quiet moment together instead of working with democracy and children’s rights at meals. Preschool teachers mention the available options and obstacles to create democratic meals. The large number of children at the dinner table was one of the obstacles they mentioned. / Sammanfattning Den här studiens syfte är att undersöka hur förskollärare anser att de arbetar med demokrati och barns rättigheter vid måltiderna på förskolan. I undersökningen tar jag även att ta reda på om förskollärarna kunde se några hinder för att kunna genomföra dessa måltider på ett demokratiskt sätt. Metoden som studien utgår från är intervjuer med förskollärare, för att de då får möjlighet att dela med sig av sina tankar och idéer kring hur de arbetar. Resultatet i studien visar att förskollärarna inte har fokus på att arbeta med demokrati och barns rättigheter vid måltiderna, fokus ligger istället på att barnen ska bli mätta och ha en lugn stund tillsammans. Förskollärarna tar även upp de möjligheter och hinder som de kan stöta på för att skapa demokratiska måltider. Det stora barnantalet vid matbordet var ett av de hinder som de såg.

A prospective, longitudinal and observational study, using a non-clinical population of mother-child dyads was conducted to evaluate the contribution of family-environmental factors in predicting child food avoidance and feeding problems across early childhood. The contribution of maternal feeding practices, mealtime structure and interactional behaviour during mealtimes, were explored in predicting child food avoidance between 2 and 5 years, whilst also evaluating the role of maternal psychopathology and child temperament. This thesis also assessed the validity of maternal reports of child eating behaviour and feeding practices by obtaining independent observations of these constructs, and explored the longitudinal stability and continuity of both independent observations and maternal reports of child eating behaviour and maternal feeding practices. Concurrently and prospectively, observations of mothers eating with their child, displaying high sensitivity, low control, and more positive emotion and verbalisation during mealtimes predicted less avoidant child eating behaviour. Reports of mothers providing a healthy food-related home environment, encouraging balanced food intake, and involving their child in food planning, in addition to a less emotional child temperament, were also significant longitudinal predictors of less avoidant child eating behaviour. Maternal descriptions of their child s eating behaviour were validated by independent observations; however maternal descriptions of their own feeding practices were not. Child eating behaviour and maternal feeding practices were predominantly stable and continuous across early childhood, with the exception of child difficulty to feed and maternal pressure to eat which decreased between the ages of 3 and 4. This thesis demonstrates many interesting and novel findings but primarily through the utilisation of observational and longitudinal data it demonstrates the important causal contribution of family-environmental factors in the development of food avoidant eating behaviours during early childhood.

This dissertation examines mealtime conversations between parents and children in eight Swedish and eight Italian middle class, dual-earner households, exploring the ways in which children are engaged in the cooperative construction of social order. The study is part of an international project (cf. Aronsson & Pontecorvo, 2002), coordinated with prior work in the US (cf. Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik, 2013). Study I explores how children’s accounts work during family dinner conversations. So called proto-accounts (laments, multiple repeats, want-statements) and varied verbal accounts are analyzed in relation to age class or prior language socialization experiences. Study II focuses on the use of endearment terms in directive sequences between parents and children. The findings show an asymmetrical distribution of endearment terms, in that only parents make use of them when interactional problems – children’s non-compliance with parental requests in particular – arise.   Study III examines the ways in which Italian parents deploy the discourse marker dai (‘come on’) in directive sequences. This is a flexible linguistic resource that is employed by parents as a cajoling token when children fail to comply with parental requests, hindering the advancement of the in-progress activity. This thesis describes family mealtimes as parent-directed activities where sociality, morality and local understandings of the world (Ochs & Shohet, 2006) are collaboratively re-created and enacted. This confirms the crucial role of everyday family meals as rich cultural sites (Ochs & Shohet, 2006) for reasserting moral attitudes of the family: participants learn moment by moment how to be competent actors that are able to choose between alternative courses of action and that can therefore be held accountable for their actions (Bergmann, 1998: 284). From this point of view, a dinner is paradigmatic of the deep moral sense that permeates the making of a family.