Food Security Commons^™

The Effect Of School And Neighborhood Environmental Factors On Childhood Obesity, Yiwei Qian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of three chapters exploring the effect of school program and neighborhood environment on childhood obesity outcome using individual panel data set of Arkansas public schoolchildren.

The first chapter (Section 2) investigates how the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP), a program that provides funding for the distribution of free fresh fruits and vegetables to students in participating schools, affects childhood obesity. We combine matching methodology and difference-in-differences analysis to estimate the effect of the FFVP on childhood BMI outcomes. Estimates of the FFVP effect are sensitive to different matching methods. Methods that provide a good balance between …

Two Studies On Childhood Obesity: Effect Of Obesity On Academic Achievement And Effect Of Food Store Access On Diet Quality, Gaogao Yu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis includes two studies on childhood obesity. This first study investigates whether childhood obesity rates affect their academic achievement scores by using a school-level panel data set on Arkansas 4th and 6th grades. The main results indicate that childhood obesity rates do not significantly affect academic achievement scores. Controls for education inputs such as library volume, educational expenditures per student and teacher salary show consistently significant positive relationship to students' test scores in both whole sample and in subsample analyses by socio-economic and minority status. The second study examines the effect of a neighborhood food environment feature, specifically food …

Physio-Chemical And Sensory Properties Of A Nutrient-Fortified Extruded Product, Tajudini Lassissi Akande

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Protein malnutrition is responsible for half the deaths of children under the age of five each year in developing countries. More than 4%, 26%, and 70% of children with protein malnutrition live in Latin America/the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia, respectively. The objective of this research was to develop a novel snack made with millet, black eye bean (from Niger Republic), and rice flour fortified with soybean meal protein using extrusion technology. Proximate analysis of the four flours was carried out to determine their chemical composition. Central composite design (CCD) was used to obtain best extrusion conditions to develop a protein-enriched …

Local Food And Agriculture Awareness: The Literacy Of Local Produce And Agriculture In Northwest Arkansas, Kyle Colton Flynn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that adolescents and children, both male and female, are failing to meet the daily fruit and vegetable consumption requirements (Kim et al., 2011; Upton et al., 2012; Harris et al., 2012). Other studies have shown that with increased exposure and availability of produce, students (K-5) tend to consume more fruits and vegetables (Cullen et al., 2009; Evans et al., 2012). The purpose of this study is to identify whether Northwest Arkansas eleventh grade high school students possess experience and knowledge of local produce and agriculture. Out of 1054 students enrolled at …

Resources And Relationships: Food Insecurity And Social Capital Among Middle School Students, Don Edward Willis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between food insecurity and Social capital among 5th-7th graders attending an intermediate school in Northwest Arkansas where nearly 70 percent of students participate in the free or reduced lunch program. The central research questions are: Does Social capital have a direct impact on children's food insecurity? And, does Social capital mediate the influence of negative circumstances on children's food insecurity? This study finds that Social capital does have a significant association with food insecurity, even when controlling for multiple demographic and circumstantial factors. However, there appears to be no mediation of circumstance by Social capital. …

The Impact Of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Bse) On World Protein Supply, Jarrod Kersey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As world population, per capita income and urbanization increase, consumption of meat, poultry, milk and eggs will continue to rise to meet the needs of approximately nine billion people in 2050. Global beef, pig and chicken production and per capita consumption increased between 2000 and 2010, with growth in broiler production and consumption outpacing both beef and swine. The increased production and consumption requires readily available feed ingredients in regions where animal production is rapidly developing. Animal-based protein feed ingredients are often difficult to move from country to country due to real or perceived risk of animal disease. Zoosanitary standards …

The Evolution Of Natural Plant Communities Through Crop Migration And Crop-To-Weed Gene Flow, Meredith G. Schafer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the rising demand for food and biofuels, the efficiency of crop production has become vital to assuring food security. Genetically engineered (GE) crop varieties are broadly thought to be a solution for improving the efficiency of crop production, but concerns regarding their release have heightened as more discoveries have focused on the influence of genetically engineered crops on native and weedy plant species. Risk assessment of GE crop varieties focuses on two main areas: feralization of crop systems and crop-weed hybridization. Risks include naturalization, transgene introgression, and the formation of novel genotypes in natural systems. In this study, roadside …

Food Environment And Childhood Obesity, Yucong Jiao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines whether children's food environment, especially food stores that have fresh produce, affects obesity prevalence among elementary school children in the state of Arkansas. Misclassified food outlet types in the Dun and Bradstreet commercial data set were first corrected and then food environment measures were computed and aggregated to geographic regions corresponding to school attendance areas. After applying classical panel estimation, it was found that the fixed effects model fit the data best. Results indicate that an additional supermarket within a one-mile radial of the census neighborhood block center will bring down childhood obesity prevalence by 0.58 percent, …

Impact Of Hybrid Rice On Food Security: A Spatial Equilibrium Analysis Of Global Adoption And Diffusion Of Hybrid Rice Varieties, Till Ludwig

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice is the staple crop for most consumers in Asia. More than half of the global population depends on rice. However, scarce resources for agricultural production and unfavorable conditions will make it hard to meet future demand in rice and threaten future food security. Hybrid rice technology is a method to increase the productivity of resources needed for rice production. Current developments show not only yield improvements in comparison to existing conventional and hybrid varieties, but also fuel hopes for new abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. The objective of this study is to determine what impact hybrid rice varieties can …