It is well known that the foundations for food choice are laid down in childhood. Poor dietary habits learned in childhood may persist into adult life. The dietary awareness of children is subject to a range of complex interacting forces, for example, peer group pressure, social factors and television advertising. Many investigators have developed innovative methodologies to record these parameters. Reviews, therefore, the methodological issues of studies which have attempted to elicit pre‐adolescent attitudes, knowledge and beliefs in food. Finally, makes recommendations about methodological issues that should be considered when studying pre‐adolescent children’s food choice.

This article argues that achieving health and achieving wellbeing are different. The use of phenomenological and narrative approaches helped to elicit the meanings, nature and dimensions of wellbeing for ‘lay’ people, and also how wellbeing was maintained, lost and recovered. It indicates that the term ‘wellbeing’ has a much wider meaning than ‘health’. The two terms are interrelated, but the former has many more domains, health generally applying to the physical and sometimes to mental domains. The role of professionals in helping and hindering the attainment of wellbeing is examined. Prevention of ill‐health may well be the province of those who work in the health services, but promotion of health and wellbeing is much wider. Those in the health service and those in social services, education and other professions should be aware of what wellbeing is, and how they affect it, for both themselves and their clients.

Bridging the gap between the theory and practice of health promotion on student placements is a challenge. Recent policy documents and the National Occupational Standards for professional activity have highlighted the need to provide training for health professionals in this area. This paper draws on a study to investigate students’, lecturers’ and clinical staff's understanding of the practice of, and education for, health promotion, and their perception of how clinical competence is achieved in this domain. Questionnaire findings revealed that students and newly qualified staff displayed a narrow perception of health promotion, despite a wider definition that now pervades theoretical teaching. Students benefited from health promotion sessions in the university and used much of this information to promote their own and their family's health. The use of more open and qualitative techniques (focus groups and semi‐structured interviews) and prompting through amplification of the term health promotion induced students to realize that they were in fact practising a wider definition. Findings indicate that students would welcome the opportunity to extend their health promotion practice. Furthermore, the data suggested that articulation by clinicians of their health promotion practice, together with discussion and reflection, would help students and staff embed knowledge into practice. Visible parts of health promotion, such as advice on smoking cessation, were easier to articulate and put into practice than were the less tangible aspects, such as tackling inequalities. Lack of time and poor staffing levels constrained the ability of supervisors and students to discuss and reflect on health promotion theory and practice. However, opportunities, especially in the community, were more frequently pinpointed as learning experiences compared with the acute sector. Use of the National Occupational Standards was seen as a way to develop curricula, while active mentoring was identified as a means of evaluating and enhancing health promotion activities in the clinical learning environment.