Hospitality, Tourism and Public Relations

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Browsing Hospitality, Tourism and Public Relations by Author "Egal, A. A."

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    Development of nutrition education programme for HIV/AIDS affected orphans in peri-urban informal settlement
    (2013-07-29) Senoelo, S. J.; Egal, A. A.; Napier, C.
    Introduction and purpose: This empirical study was carried out to determine the nutritional status and level of nutritional knowledge amongst orphaned children. A cycle menu will be developed after sensory evaluations of all protein enhanced dishes. Method: Anthropometric measures were used to determine the nutritional status and to measure the nutrition knowledge of 100 orphaned children aged 9 to 13 years old in Boipatong, Vaal region. A nutritional knowledge questionnaire was administered to the study group. Furthermore the anthropometric measurement was carried out and analysed with World Health Organization software (AnthoPius) using ±2 standard deviations cut off points, and data on nutritional knowledge were captured on Microsoft Excel and analysed for frequencies, mean and standard deviation (SD) using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 1'7. Results: The results for nutritional status revealed that 59% of the population studied were underweight, 40% were stunted and 25% were wasted. Most of the respondents (70%) scored less than 50% on the nutrition knowledge questionnaire. The mean correct answer for multiple choice questions was 29.65% and for true/false question was 50.34%. Conclusion: The orphaned children are under-nourished and wasted. Further to this, the nutrition knowledge of the orphans is poor. It is recommended that a nutrition education programme be implemented so as to address the issue of poor food choices and malnutrition.
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    Evaluative criteria applied by selected female fashion consumers in the Vaal Region when purchasing casual daywear
    (2007-12) Hugo, Susanna Hendrina; Egal, A. A.
    Criteria used by fashion consumers to assess the quality of apparel products during the decision-making process are a good indication of what considerations to keep in mind for customer satisfaction. Evaluative criteria of concern to apparel customers are intrinsic attributes, involving physical features such as design/style, materials and construction and performance features such as aesthetic and functional aspects and extrinsic attributes such as price, brand, store image, label, country of origin and appropriateness for the occasion, in this case casual day wear. The broad research aim of this exploratory study was to determine which evaluative criteria were used by female fashion consumers in the Vaal Region to determine apparel quality when purchasing casual daywear, and to what extent the various criteria were applied. A self-administered, structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Sections 1 and 2 measured the importance of intrinsic and extrinsic clothing evaluative criteria. Section 3 investigated the frequency with which the respondents bought casual daywear at various store types, namely specialty, department and discount stores, while section 4 gathered the demographic information of the respondents. A representative sample was chosen from the academic personnel of all seven tertiary institutions in the Vaal Region. The majority of the lecturers (38.00 percent) were between the ages of 31 and 40, which can be described as relatively young, constituting a group sometimes referred to as baby busters or Generation X. Although the predominant population group was white (65.71 percent), a quarter of the respondents were black. They all had a tertiary qualification, indicating a relatively high educational level, and an average income. These espondents were predominantly married, either by orthodox or customary marriage. Regarding the application of evaluative criteria for quality assessment, these respondents used intrinsic apparel attributes to a greater extent than extrinsic attributes. Three functional performance aspects namely durability, comfort and fit were rated equal and most important for judging quality, followed closely by an extrinsic attribute namely appropriateness for casual daywear. Three clusters of respondents could be distinguished, each with a specific disposition towards the evaluative criteria. The most popular store type for clothing was Department stores, followed by Discount and Specialty stores.
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    Impact of a soy feeding programmme on the nutritional status of an elderly community in Sharpeville
    (2014-12) Marumo-Ngwenya, Kuda; Oldewage-Theron, W. H.; Egal, A. A.
    Main Purpose of the study: To evaluate the impact of soy protein feeding intervention over a period of six months on the nutritional status of an elderly (≥60 years old) community of Sharpeville, in which poverty, household food security and malnutrition were prevalent. Methods: An experimental design that had no control group but a comparison between hypercholesterolaemic (HC) and normocholesterolaemic (NC) groups was used with 134 randomly selected elderly respondents. The first stage involved a baseline survey which determined the prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and nutritional status among participants. Measurements included biochemical indices (serum lipids, vitamin B12, folate and homocysteine), anthropometry (weight, height and waist circumference) and dietary intake using 24h-recall and 7-day dietary diversity questionnaire. Socio-demographic information gathered from previous studies on the same subjects was used. The second stage was the preparation, formulation, and implementation of a nutrition education programme to assess its impact on nutrition knowledge after the nutrition education intervention. The nutrition education was conducted in two sections, namely an exploratory study and an experimental study. An exploratory study was conducted to assess the nutrition education needs of the elderly and was followed by the experimental study, which assessed nutrition knowledge before and after the intervention. The third stage was the implementation of the 10 grams soy protein daily feeding intervention for a period of six months and evaluation of its impact on risk factors for cardiovascular disease and on nutritional status. Sensory tests, compliance and the same measurements conducted at baseline were used at follow-up (feeding intervention). A comparison of the findings of the baseline study and follow-up study was conducted. Also to provide deeper insight into the effect of soy on the risk factors for CVD and nutritional status, respondents were further stratified into HC and NC groups based on their LDL-C levels at baseline study and results were also presented as such. The data analyses included descriptive statistics and t-tests on SPSS version 21.0. Results: From the baseline study, the dietary intake results revealed a poor dietary intake which contributed to inadequate estimated average requirements (EAR) and adequate intakes (AI) of nutrients. A mainly carbohydrate-based diet was consumed with minimal intake of dairy and legumes despite a medium dietary diversity score. The anthropometric indices at baseline indicated over-nutrition based on the reported waist circumference 97.32±10.32 (80.6%) above substantial risk of CDL, obesity (75.3%) and hypertension (56.7%), with the highest percentages for both waist circumference of substantial risk and overweight/obesity found among the women (80.9% and 79.9% respectively) and for hypertension among the men (79.1%). For the biochemical results at baseline, the prevalence of risk factors for CVD was observed as abnormal mean serum lipids such as LDL-cholesterol (3.6±1.1), HDL-cholesterol (0.73±0.4), total cholesterol:HDL-cholesterol ratio (7.9±2.9), triglyceride:HDL-cholesterol ratio (2.7±2.1) and homocysteine (17.1±9.2) in the total group. The women had high TC (5.2±1.1) indicating borderline risk of CVD as compared with men who had lower TC (4.5±0.8) and this was significantly different (p=0.049). The nutrition education programme was effective in increasing knowledge with an improvement of 14.5 percent from pre- (62.3%) to post-test (76.8%) for the total group which was statistically significant (p=0.000). The results for the soy protein feeding intervention, the dietary intake for the total group indicated a statistically significant decrease in energy intake (p=0.001), by about 20.4 percent form baseline to follow-up, while energy intake at baseline was already below the EAR. Also a statistically significant decrease was seen from baseline to follow-up for total dietary fat (p=0.004), cholesterol (p=0.008) and animal protein (p=0.000), with a statistically significant increase only on dietary folate (p=0.001) and iron (0.001). These dietary changes were also observed for the HC and NC groups after the intervention with only fat not decreasing significantly for the HC group. For the anthropometry indices, and hypertension no significant impact after the intervention for the total group and also for the HC and NC groups was observed. The biochemical results indicated a beneficial effect of the soy-based products on the following serum lipids: a significant improvement in LDL-C (p=0.000), HDL-C (p=0.000) and TC:HDL ratio (p=0.000) for the HC group while only TC:HDL ratio showed a significant improvement for the NC group after the intervention. However, high risk factors for CVD in this elderly group were still observed, with a significant decrease after the intervention of serum folate (p=0.000) below the recommended level and a significant increase in homocysteine (p=0.000) above the recommended level. Significant differences between the HC and NC groups were seen in TC, LDL-C, LDL:HDL-C ratio and TC:HDL-C ratio at the beginning of the intervention (baseline). However, at the end of the intervention (follow-up), significant differences were observed only in TC, LDL-C and homocysteine. Conclusion: Although the energy intake reduced significantly, only three of the micro-nutrients (pantothenate, Niacin and selenium) had a significant decrease between baseline and follow-up. Therefore the nutritional status of these elderly was not affected as it was also observed that there was no significant impact on anthropometric indices that took place. However this intervention had a significant impact on iron intake, which was one of the deficiencies identified amongst this elderly people from previous study. Also the nutrition education and a daily consumption of at least 10g of soy had a significant beneficial effect on LDL-C, HDL-C and TC:HDL ratio for the HC groups, thus reducing risk of CVD. Although soy had a beneficial effect on blood lipid profile no effect on hypertension was observed. The guideline of a 25g intake of soy should be encouraged as recommended by FDA as an effective cholesterol-lowering food item.
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    Nutritional status and dietary intake patterns of children aged 7-13 years in Qwa-Qwa
    (2013) Mofokeng, Mosela Julia|; Oldewage-Theron, W. H.; Egal, A. A.
    Both under and over nutrition are prevalent among children in South Africa. At national level, children suffered from under nutrition. Childhood malnutrition starts early in life, the first two years being the most vulnerable period. Malnutrition is a public health problem in South Africa, especially in young children, requiring a systematic approach to improve nutrition services and promote behavior change. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to determine the nutritional status of the primary school children in Qwa-Qwa in South Africa. The study was carried out in two phases, namely Phase 1 (Planning) and Phase 2 (data collection and analysis of socio-demographics, 24-hour recall, a food frequency questionnaire, dietary diversity and anthropometric measurements). Weight and height were measured for 70 children (100% of the sample) and analysed according to the World Health Organization documents (WHO 2007) to determine nutritional status of the respondents. The data were captured on an Excel spreadsheet by the researcher and analysed for descriptive statistics such as frequencies, standard deviations and confidence intervals on the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 18.0 program. A convenience sample of 70 primary school children aged 7-13 years, including girls (n=38) and boys (n=32) forming part of 105 purposively selected households were recruited for the study. The results showed that the majority of the households (80.4%) had been living in Qwa-Qwa for more than five years and lived in RDP brick houses (86.7%) with more than four rooms (56.3%). The monthly income of the households was less than R1000.00 in the majority of the households (73.9%) and 42.0% of the households spent < R100 on food per week which is calculated at R14.29 per day and R 2.86 per household member per day. The respondents consumed a mainly carbohydrate rich diet as 10 of the 20 most consumed food items were carbohydrates (mean daily intake) such as stiff maize meal porridge(195g), soft maize meal porridge (174g) , brown and white bread(122g), potato, cooked (66g), samp, cooked (187g), potato fries (85g), breakfast cereal (300g) and rice cooked (140g). Only three vegetables and fruit formed part of the Top 20 food items mostly consumed. It is showed that very small portion sizes of mostly the vegetables and fruit as well as the protein-rich food sources were consumed. The dietary intakes of the nutrients showed deficient intakes of all except, carbohydrate, iron, Vitamin K and B12. However, these nutrients showed an adequate intake, but there were still 38% of all respondents who did not consume 100% of the EAR for the CHO compared to 38%, 73%, 71% and 60% for Fe, vitamin A, vitamin B12 and K respectively. Vitamin C intakes were low which was consistent with only three vegetables and fruit which showed that children consumed small amounts of vegetables and fruit portions. The mean (±SD) Food Variety Score for all the food groups consumed from all the food groups in a period of seven days was 23.96 (±16.08). These results revealed poor dietary diversity. Cereal was the food group with the highest mean food variety score in this study population. The mean ±SD FVS of 23.96 (±16.08) revealed poor dietary diversity in the children despite the relatively high food variety (88 individual foods consumed in seven days). More boys (28.5%) were underweight (<-2SD) compared to fewer girls (17.4%). There is thus acute malnutrition in this group of the children which is consisted with the insufficient food intakes reflected by the 24-hour recall and dietary diversity measurements. Stunting was prevalent in 21.1% and 18.7% of the girls and boys respectively, with 4.3% of all the children being severely stunted (<-3SD). This indicates chronic malnutrition and or the presence of infections over a long period leading to failure of linear growth. None of the boys and girls were overweight or obese, whilst (71.8 %) of boys and (81.5%) of girls were of normal weight. It can be concluded that poverty, household food insecurity and poor dietary intakes and diversity resulted in poor nutritional status of the children in this community. The high prevalence of inadequate nutrient intakes and poor nutritional status (under-nutrition) amongst the children in this study, demonstrates the need for effective sustainable food and nutrition interventions aimed at improving dietary intake and diversity as well as the poor nutritional status.