Feeding the Family—A Food Is Medicine Intervention: Preliminary Baseline Results of Clinical Data from Caregivers and Children

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The manuscript submitted for review is interesting and well-planned, but the results presented and their description require further refinement. It is a pity that it was not possible to gather a larger group to take part in the study.

Comments

Lines 200-206: In my opinion, these lines present methodological data, i.e., data on the people participating in the study.

Similarly, lines 207-222 in the Demographic section describe the methodology used to characterize the group participating in the study.  

It appears that too many groups were created in Table 1, especially since there were no respondents (n = 0) in these groups, which may have confounded the statistical analyses.

The table should contain data relevant to the group, not hypothetical data. Similarly, such a detailed breakdown of education level was unnecessary, as in some cases there were no participants in the study group, or, for example, there was only one person.

 This table could certainly be divided into a subsection on other data, such as food assistance and government assistance, and then analyzed to determine which groups of study participants were affected by each factor.

The explanation of abbreviations in the table can be explained by using commas without the letters. It is very difficult for a reader to analyze a table that extends over several pages. 

Table 2 – What do the values refer to? Are they numbers or percentages?

In my opinion, the results presented in Table 3 should be the subject of discussion and not just left to the reader's own analysis.

The discussion is well presented. The results obtained probably have some limitations that are worth mentioning.

In my opinion, the conclusions are too general and do not contribute much to acquiring new knowledge. The authors do not suggest further directions for research or analysis.

The literature citation is incorrect, inconsistent with the journal's recommendations, and should be corrected. The sources are from the last 15 years, so I have no objections.

More advanced statistical analysis would be useful, but the study group is relatively small, so it would not be well-performed. This study should be considered a pilot study.

Unfortunately, this is not the best-prepared manuscript and requires further refinement before it can be published.

Reviewer

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My first question - why it is 'brief report'? This is rather 'protocol study'.

The study lacks trial registration, which is a key for all randomized controlled trial. All randomised controlled studies that assign human participants prospectively to health-related interventions must be registered. A dietary treatment in clinical trials is a controlled modification of a participant's diet to determine its effect on specific health outcomes.T

Studies requiring registration:

- Clinical trials: Studies assigning human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to test cause-and-effect relationships.

- Interventions: Drugs, surgeries, medical devices, behavioural, and dietary treatments.

• Health outcomes: Measures like pharmacokinetics and adverse events.

Add more information about:

• randomization (marker/-s, control, blinded)
• how the sample size was determined
• medically tailored meals (nutrients, food,energy)
• Grocery Prescription (who control; assess)
• performance of anthropometrics and references values
• references values for biomarkers

Table 1 must be modified.

The correlation test shows no associations.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Gabriela Drucker et al. submitted to Nutrients a brief report dealing with a randomized controlled trial named Feeding The Family.
The work appears well-structured, however, it would be helpful to consider some suggestions:

• Detail how informed consent was obtained;
• Restructure Table 1 with a more appropriate table format, or create a Table 1 and a Table 2, dividing the items, avoiding blank cells with no data;
• Please conclude with an adequately comprehensive conclusion, not in five lines;
• Furthermore, I ask that the Authors review the relevant literature, verifying the existence of recent works on the topic and taking the opportunity to incorporate them, broadening the discussions.
• The abbreviations section is not filled out correctly (MDPI, DOAJ, etc.)

All the best.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, 

The manuscript is still not perfect, although the authors have taken into account many comments, but these are rather responses to comments from other reviewers.

I suggest adding the term "Preliminary study" to the title, because the research group is small.

The authors added a Limitation section.

The p coefficient should be written in italics.

Section "3.1. Demographics" is still presented as a research result, but it is a methodology because it characterizes the research group and does not present the research results.

The authors have revised the "Conclusion" section. It now reads much better.

The literature is still cited incorrectly, contrary to the journal's recommendations, which requires correction.

Reviewer

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for partially taking my comments into account.

Due to the comment about: - Brief report/Study protocol - you indentified the aim as:The objective of this paper is to describe the baseline characteristics, enrollment procedures, and study details of the participating cohort - this is aim of Study protocol, but we need more specific date about method and results. And by the way, using 'cohort' for small group is incorrrect.

Similarly without registration - your statement 'novel pragmatic randomized control trial (pRCT)' is unfounded.

• biomarkers - you wrote: Primary outcomes of interest include child and caregiver/adult BMI percentile, blood pressure, hemoglobin A1c, and lipid panels. In my opinion, it is necessary to provide information on reference values ​​by age, gender and to count how many adults and children had normal/optimal or abnormal levels. Moreover I couldn't find results about secondary outcomes: the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Fruit and Vegetables Section; and Family stress (lines 190-7) and comments for this aspects.
• Still 'association ' remained in the table titles.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for taking my comments into account.

Author Response

Thank you.