Sarah A Mcnaughton

Deakin University · Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition

Despite their status as high-income food producing nations, children and their caregivers, both in the United States (U.S.) and Australia can experience food insecurity. Nutrition researchers formed a joint U.S.-Australia collaboration to help advance food security for households with young children aged 0–5 years. This study investigated food inse...

Background Improving diet quality relies on making manageable adjustments to eating behaviours. Personalised nutrition interventions hold promise for modifying behaviour. Machine learning (ML) offers a novel approach to examining dietary behaviours in personalised nutrition by leveraging data on past behaviours and environmental contexts. This stud...

Objective This study develops successful ageing profiles across six low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and examines associations with fruit and vegetable (F&V) intake. Design A cross-sectional analysis was conducted in mid-aged and older adults from the WHO Study of Global Ageing. Participants without chronic disease, cognitive impairment, de...

Adequate fruit and vegetable consumption is essential for healthy ageing and prevention and management of chronic disease. This study aimed to examine characteristics associated with fruit and vegetable consumption in Chinese men and women aged 50 years and over. Data from the first wave of the Chinese cohort (2008–2010) of the WHO’s Study on globa...

The primary aim of this study was to examine the association between snack nutritional quality, overall diet quality and adiposity among Australian adolescents. The secondary aim was to assess the distribution of discretionary foods (i.e. energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods and beverages) and intakes from the five food groups at different levels o...

BACKGROUND Accessibility barriers contribute to low participation in center-based cardiac rehabilitation. We developed an innovative, comprehensive, dual-phase telerehabilitation program to address this gap (Smartphone Cardiac Rehabilitation Assisted Self-Management; SCRAM). OBJECTIVE To determine the effectiveness of SCRAM for increasing maximal...

Dietary and movement behaviors [physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior (SED), and sleep] occur throughout a 24-h day and involve multiple contexts. Understanding the temporal patterning of these 24-h behaviors and their contextual determinants is key to determining their combined effect on health. A scoping review was conducted to identify nove...

Background Low fruit and vegetable consumption is a leading contributor to non-communicable disease risk. However, understanding of barriers and facilitators to fruit and vegetable intake in rural settings is limited. This study used a mixed methods approach to determine the barriers and facilitators to increasing fruit and vegetable intake in rura...

There is a growing focus on better understanding the complexity of dietary patterns and how they relate to health and other factors. Approaches that have not traditionally been applied to characterize dietary patterns, such as machine learning algorithms and latent class analysis methods, may offer opportunities to measure and characterize dietary...

Purpose Poor bioavailability may contribute to iron deficiency among children in high-resource countries, but iron bioavailability of Australian pre-schooler diets is unknown. This study aimed to estimate the bioavailability of Australian pre-schooler iron intakes across the day and by eating occasions to identify optimal timing for intervention, b...

Diets low in vegetables are a main contributor to the health burden experienced by Australians living in rural communities. Given the ubiquity of smartphones and access to the Internet, digital interventions may offer an accessible delivery model for a dietary intervention in rural communities. However, no digital interventions to address low veget...

Consumer interest in plant-based diets has increased, alongside significant growth in the availability of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives in supermarkets(1). The nutritional profile of these products is likely to vary due to the broad range of ingredients used(2). Food composition databases, such as the Australian Food Composition Database...

Within rural Australia, only 47% and 9% of adults meet recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake, respectively, which is a leading contributor to the increased risk of non-communicable disease. Previous literature has identified barriers and facilitators to increasing fruit and vegetable intake in rural Australian settings, such as having grea...

A range of metrics have been developed and used to measure components of dietary patterns (e.g., adequacy, quality, diversity). However, no existing dietary metric simultaneously captures the three key dimensions of sustainable healthy diets recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization...

Background Social media is a popular source of information about food and nutrition. There is a high degree of inaccurate and poor-quality nutrition-related information present online. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality and accuracy of nutrition-related information posted by popular Australian Instagram accounts and examine trends in...

Unhealthy diet is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). However, there are no studies reporting the impact and trends of dietary risk factors on CVD in Australia. This study aimed to determine the burden of CVDs attributable to dietary risk factors in Australia between 1990 and 2019. We used data from the Global Burden of...

Introduction Diets low in vegetables are a main contributor to the health burden experienced by young adults in rural communities. Digital health interventions provide an accessible delivery model that can be personalised to meet the diverse preferences of young adults. A personalisable digital vegetable intake intervention (Veg4Me) was codesigned...

Background Diets low in vegetables are a main contributor to the health burden experienced by Australians living in rural communities. Given the ubiquity of smartphones and access to the Internet, digital interventions may offer an accessible delivery model for a dietary intervention in rural communities. However, no digital interventions to addres...

Objective To examine trends in intake of key food groups among Iranian adults between 2005 and 2016, overall, and according to socio-demographic characteristics. Design Repeat cross-sectional data from the Iran-STEPwise approach to risk factor surveillance (Iran-WHO STEPS) 2005-2016 were analyzed. Regression analyses were used to evaluate trends i...

This study examined differences in food groups consumed at eating occasions by the level of adherence to dietary guidelines in Australian adults (≤19 years) and whether consumption differed with respect to age, sex, and education levels. Secondary analysis of the 2011-2012 National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey (N = 9054) was performed, us...

Purpose To assess the relationship of early pregnancy maternal diet quality (DQ) with maternal plasma lipids and indicators of cardiometabolic health, including blood pressure (BP), gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and gestational weight gain (GWG). Methods Women (n = 215) aged 18–40 years with singleton pregnancies were recruited at 10–20 week...

Background Socio-economic position (SEP) in adolescence may influence diet quality over the life course. However, knowledge of whether individual and environmental determinants of diet quality mediate the longitudinal association between SEP and diet quality is limited. This study examined whether and to what extent food-related capabilities, oppor...

Social media is a popular source of nutrition information and can influence food choice. Instagram is widely used in Australia, and nutrition is frequently discussed on Instagram. However, little is known about the content of nutrition information published on Instagram. The aim of this study was to examine the content of nutrition-related posts fr...

Objective: This systematic review aimed to summarise the level of quality and accuracy of nutrition-related information on websites and social media and determine if quality and accuracy varied between websites and social media or publishers of information. Design: This systematic review was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42021224277). CINAHL, MED...

Introduction This study examined the cross-sectional association between household dietary patterns and sociodemographic characteristics and BMI in a nationally representative sample of Iranian adults. Methods Data on 6,833 households (n = 17,824 adults) from the National Comprehensive Study on Household Food Consumption Pattern and Nutritional St...

Plant-based dietary patterns are comprised of a range of foods, and increasingly, diet quality indices are used to assess them and their associations with health outcomes. As the design of these indices varies, a review of existing indices is necessary to identify common features, strengths, and considerations. This scoping review aimed to synthesi...

Background Digital interventions may help address low vegetable intake in adults, however there is limited understanding of the features that make them effective. We systematically reviewed digital interventions to increase vegetable intake to 1) describe the effectiveness of the interventions; 2) examine links between effectiveness and use of co-d...

Excess free sugars intake contributes to dental caries and obesity in children. Food frequency questionnaires (FFQ) that assess free sugars intake in young children are limited. This study evaluated the utility of a 68-item FFQ to assess free sugars intake in Australian young children against three 24-h recalls at ages 1.5, 3.5, and 5.0 years. Free...

Comprehensive metrics that provide a measure of dietary patterns at global and national levels are needed to inform and assess the effectiveness of policy actions that promote sustainable healthy diets. In 2019, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization reported 16 guiding principles of sustainabl...

Dietary behaviours in early childhood are understudied despite links with later health. Assessing the distribution of key food groups across the day could identify opportunities for improvements. This study aimed to describe the 24-hourly distribution of dietary intakes and frequency of eating occasions for weekdays and weekend days among children...

Dietary guidelines should be underpinned by high-quality evidence. Quality assessment methods that reflect traditional evidence hierarchies prioritise evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs). The Hierarchies of Evidence Applied to Lifestyle Medicine (HEALM) approach is an alternative quality assessment method for research questions that f...

Poor diet quality exacerbates risks for acute and chronic conditions. People experiencing food insecurity have an increased likelihood of lower diet quality; however, this has not been investigated in the Australian context. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine whether the diet quality of Australian adults differed according to thei...

Changes between diet quality and health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) over 12 years were examined in men and women. In 2844 adults (46% males; mean age 47.3 (SD 9.7) years) from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle study with data at baseline, 5 and 12 years. Dietary intake was assessed with a 74-item FFQ. Diet quality was estimated wi...

Background Health-related misinformation can be propagated via social media and is a threat to public health. Several quality assessment tools and principles to evaluate health-related information in the public domain exist; however, these were not designed specifically for social media. Objective This study aims to develop Principles for Health-r...

Despite increasing rates of food insecurity in high income countries, food insecurity and its related factors are inconsistently and inadequately assessed, especially among households with young children (0–6 years) and pregnant women. To fill this gap, researchers from the U.S. and Australia collaborated to develop a comprehensive household food s...

Purpose The global prevalence of overweight remains high; effective strategies that consider patterns of body weight changes to identify periods when adults are susceptible to weight gain are warranted. This systematic review aimed to investigate body weight patterns, and how they were associated with dietary intake and/or dietary behaviours (Prosp...

With a global focus on improving maternal and child nutrition through the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, it is important to understand food insecurity in pregnant women and families with young children, as food insecurity at these life stages can have ongoing negative health consequences. However, factors that influence food insecurity among t...

The use of dietary pattern assessment methods has increased over time. However, data from individual studies can be difficult to compare and synthesize when the dietary pattern assessment methods, and the dietary patterns that are identified are not described sufficiently. The aims of this systematic review were to analyze the application and repor...

Purpose To derive dietary patterns based on dietary energy density (DED), free sugars, SFA, and fiber and investigate association with odds of overweight/obesity in young adults. Methods Cross-sectional data from 625 young Australian adults (18–30 years) were used. Dietary patterns were derived using reduced rank regression based on dietary data f...

Abstract Background Recommendations to define eating occasions (EO) currently exist for research in adults, but not for children or adolescents. We examined how varying EO definitions affect the characterization of eating patterns in children and adolescents. Methods Cross-sectional dietary data collected using a 24-h recall data during the 2011–12...

Few Australians consume diets consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines. A major problem is high intake of discretionary food and drinks (those not needed for health and high in saturated fat, added sugar, salt and/or alcohol). Low socioeconomic groups (SEGs) suffer particularly poor diet-related health. Surprisingly, detailed quantitative...

Background Examining a variety of diet quality methodologies will inform best practice use of diet quality indices for assessing all-cause and CVD mortality. Objective To examine the association between three diet quality indices (Australian Dietary Guideline Index, DGI; Dietary Inflammatory Index, DII; Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodeg...

Dietary guidelines are important nutrition policy reference standards that should be informed by the best available evidence. The types of evidence that are reviewed and the evidence review methods that are used have implications for evidence translation. The aim of this study was to explore perceived advantages, disadvantages, and practicalities a...

Background The overall impact of interventions targeting multiple behaviours remains largely unexplored. Objectives This study adopted an integrative lifestyle pattern analysis approach to assess the overall effectiveness of an early childhood intervention on change across multiple behaviours. Methods The Melbourne INFANT program was a 15‐month c...

Objective: Despite the increased attention on neighborhood food environments and dietary behaviors, studies focusing on adolescents are limited. This study aims to characterize typologies of food environments surrounding adolescents and their associations with fast food outlet visitation and snack food purchasing to/from school. Design: The numb...

PurposeChronic low-grade inflammation is implicated in many of the diseases of ageing. Lifestyle factors, including diet may alter low-grade inflammation. This study aimed to assess cross-sectional associations between the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) score and the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein (CRP); and determine if any association d...

PurposeTo describe Australian pre-schooler dietary patterns and examine their associations with dietary iron intakes.Methods Dietary data of children (n = 812, 2 to < 6 years old) from the 2011–12 National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey were collected via two non-consecutive 24-h recalls and analysed using AUSNUT 2011–13. Usual food and nut...

Background Dietary guidelines should be informed by evidence from dietary patterns research. However, variation in the methods used to assess and report dietary patterns can make this type of evidence difficult to synthesise. The aim of this systematic review was to analyse the methods used to assess and report dietary patterns. Methods Literature...

Background Iranian diet quality has been evaluated using indices that are not based on Iranian dietary guidelines. This study examined the applicability of the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) by examining associations with sociodemographics, nutrient intakes and nutrient adequacy. Methods Household sociodemographics and dietary intakes (three 24-h diet...

Background: Higher quality diets may be related to lower dementia rates. Midlife is emerging as a critical life stage for a number of dementia risk factors. Objective: This study examines whether diet quality is related to brain structure during midlife, and if this differs by sex. Methods: This study used data from 19184 UK Biobank participan...

The impact of change in socioeconomic status (SES) from childhood to adulthood (SES mobility) on adult diet is not well understood. This study examined associations between three SES mobility variables (area disadvantage, education, occupation), and adult diet quality. 1,482 Australian participants reported childhood area-level SES in 1985 (aged 10...

Few Australians consume a healthy, equitable and more sustainable diet consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADGs). Low socioeconomic groups (SEGs) suffer particularly poor diet-related health problems. However, granular information on dietary intakes and affordability of recommended diets was lacking for low SEGs. The Healthy Diets Au...

Objective Research examining associations between diet quality and obesity in Iranian adults is limited by small and non-representative samples. This study examined associations between two diet quality indices and obesity risk in a nationally representative sample of Iranian adults and interactions by sex and area of residence. Methods Data on 18...

Objective To develop and evaluate the relative validity of a dietary diversity questionnaire (DDQ) that reflects food group diversity, food variety and micronutrient adequacy among New Zealand women. Research method & Procedures A cross-sectional study included New Zealand women (Auckland-based, 16-45 years; n=101), completing a seven-day DDQ and...

Objectives Currently, there are recommendations to defining eating occasions (EO) for use in studies of adults, but none exist for children or adolescents. This study examined how varying definitions of EO influence the characterization of eating patterns in children and adolescents. Methods Cross-sectional 24-h dietary recall data collected durin...

Background Our understanding of meal choices is limited by methodologies that do not account for the complexity of food choice behaviors. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) rank choices in a decision-making context. Objectives This study aimed to rank the relative importance of influences on meal choices in young adults and examine interactions by...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Background China has witnessed a significant nutritional transition. However, there is a gap in the literature investigating the association between change of diet and mortality among Chinese. Thus, we aimed to explore the longitudinal trajectories of diet quality over 10 years (from 1997 to 2006) and the subsequent risk of death till 2015 among Ch...

Objectives To examine associations of three diet quality indices and a polygenic risk score with incidence of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting UK Biobank, UK. Participants 77 004 men and women (40–70 years) recruited between 2006 and 2010....

Background The link between high protein intake during infancy and obesity later in childhood has been much debated, and the association with differing protein sources remains unclear. Objective This study aimed to examine the associations between total protein intake and protein from different sources (ie, nondairy animal, dairy, and plant) repor...

Abstract Background The patterning of food intake at eating occasions is a poorly understood, albeit important, step towards achieving a healthy dietary pattern. However, to capture the many permutations of food combinations at eating occasions, novel analytic approaches are required. We applied a latent variable mixture modelling (LVMM) approach t...

Background Evidence indicates that low-grade inflammation is involved in manychronic diseases of ageing. Modifiable lifestyle factors including dietcan affect low-grade inflammation. Dietary patterns allow assessment of the complex interactions of food nutrients and health and may be associated with inflammatory status. This systematic review aimed...

(n=263) Many young adults eat a poor-quality diet. However, understanding of the social–ecological correlates of diet quality in young adults is limited. The aim of the present study was to examine the correlates of diet quality in a cohort of young Australian adults. Data from the cross-sectional Measuring EAting in everyday Life Study were used....

Personalized nutrition (PN) behavior-change interventions are being used increasingly in attempts to improve dietary intake; however, the impact of PN advice on improvements in dietary intake has not been reviewed systematically. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effect of PN advice on changes in dietary intake compared with gen...

Background Low socioeconomic groups (SEGs) in Australia are less likely to consume diets consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADGs) and suffer poorer health than the broader population. The unaffordability, or perceived high cost, of healthy diets may be a factor. Detailed data on the cost of habitually consumed diets is required in o...

Background Iranian diet quality has been evaluated using indices that have not been created based on Iranian dietary guidelines. This study aimed to examine the applicability of two diet quality indices by examining their associations with nutrient adequacy, nutrient intakes and sociodemographics. Methods Dietary data were collected using three 24...

Background The diet of young adults is poor, yet little is known about the relative importance of influences on healthy eating in a decision-making context. The aim of this exploratory study was to understand the relative ranking of influences on meal choices in young adults and to investigate interactions between meal preferences and demographic a...