Indexes to Screen Obesogenic Dietary Habits in Children and Adults

Call for Papers

Dietary indexes, because of the inclusion of multiple dietary components in a single measure, let us describe the characteristics of the overall diet. Results of dietary assessment via this method are more easily understood and interpreted by consumers, practitioners, and other stakeholders such as policy makers.

In adults, dietary indexes have been found to relate to mortality and established risk factors for major chronic diseases. In children, the use of dietary indexes has been more limited. Several review papers in adults, and more recently in children, have summarized the research work in this area and have highlighted the potential usefulness of this assessment methodology.

Obesity, a global problem, reflects a state of positive energy balance and may be attributed to lifestyle factors that include diet and physical activity. Dietary indexes or other composite indexes that include diet and physical activity and inactivity components may offer a way of understanding the joint contribution of these multiple interacting factors to the risk of adiposity.

There is an acknowledged need for research aimed at developing suitable tools to comprehensively assess behaviors that may be determinants of obesity. However, there is a lack of effective, simple, and accurate prevention and screening tools for evaluating overall lifestyle quality and associating it with obesity development.

In an effort to progress research into the use and application of indexes in screening obesogenic dietary habits, we invite investigators to contribute original research and review articles for publication in the Journal of Obesity, which provide insight into the effectiveness and use of tools for assessing obesogenic dietary habits. However, tools or indices that include other lifestyle factors in addition to diet (e.g., physical activity or sedentary behaviour) are also welcomed. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Development and validation of diet indexes
• Evaluation of obesity prevention interventions using dietary indexes
• The need for healthy lifestyle indexes combining dietary habits and physical activity
• Use of reference curves and cutoffs to help in the interpretation of indexes

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobes/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/jobes/habit/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Chrystalleni Lazarou, Ministry of Education and Culture, Nicosia, Cyprus

Guest Editors

• Ashima K. Kant, Queens College, The City University of New York, Flushing, NY 11367, USA
• Sarah McNaughton, Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia
• Inge Huybrechts, Dietary Exposure Assessment Group, International Agency for Research on Cancer, 150 Cours Albert Thomas, 69372 Lyon Cedex 08, France