16 pages, Promoting healthier diets is strategic to solve the global societal challenge of excessive and unhealthy calorie intake that causes obesity and overweight and is responsible for chronic diseases that burden healthcare systems. The relationship between food and personal health is well established and in recent years it has originated a number of dietary recommendations from the World Health Organisation (WHO) focused on encouraging healthier diets. The environmental impact of food intake and of particular diets is a growing research area. However, neither research
nor public policies, in particular, have been able so far to establish a link between promoting healthier diets and their impact on enhancing environmentally healthier farming systems and the sustainability of rural landscapes. This paper addresses this gap by presenting a multidisciplinary literature review which combines evidence from nutrition and health sciences with that from environmental, agrarian and sustainability studies on the impacts of foods and dietary patterns on the environment, ecosystems and rural landscape. This integrate d review,
complemented with data analysis, highlights the Mediterranean diet as a healthier dietary pattern whose promotion could be beneficial to recover or maintain the sustainability of Mediterranean rural landscape. Hence, the second part of the paper focus on discussing the role of public policies in enabling the link between enhancing healthier diets and healthier farming systems in order to sustain rural landscapes since these play a key role in the sustainability of Mediterranean rural areas.
13 pages., Online via Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)., Analysis among adolescents (12-17 years old) revealed four types of food preferences: varied diet, avoiding vegetables, low appetite, and healthy diet. Urban versus rural residence was among the major predictors for food preferences.
11 pages., Via online journal article, OBJECTIVES: To examine the impact of social media influencer marketing of foods (healthy and unhealthy) on children’s food intake.
METHODS: In a between-subjects design, 176 children (9–11 years, mean 10.5 ± 0.7 years) were randomly assigned to view mock Instagram profiles of 2 popular YouTube video bloggers (influencers). Profiles featured images of the influencers with unhealthy snacks (participants: n = 58), healthy snacks (n = 59), or nonfood products (n = 59). Subsequently, participants’ ad libitum intake of unhealthy snacks, healthy snacks, and overall intake (combined intake of healthy and unhealthy snacks) were measured.
RESULTS: Children who viewed influencers with unhealthy snacks had significantly increased overall intake (448.3 kilocalories [kcals]; P = .001), and significantly increased intake of unhealthy snacks specifically (388.8 kcals; P = .001), compared with children who viewed influencers with nonfood products (357.1 and 292.2 kcals, respectively). Viewing influencers with healthy snacks did not significantly affect intake.
CONCLUSIONS: Popular social media influencer promotion of food affects children’s food intake. Influencer marketing of unhealthy foods increased children’s immediate food intake, whereas the equivalent marketing of healthy foods had no effect. Increasing the promotion of healthy foods on social media may not be an effective strategy to encourage healthy dietary behaviors in children. More research is needed to understand the impact of digital food marketing and inform appropriate policy action.
First published May 7, 2019. In press., We analyzed comedy series for food and beverage references, with particular attention to their type of presentation, along with the characteristics of actors associated with the references. Because the generally positive tone of comedy series can exert affective influence over audiences, the result that clearly unhealthy products appeared more often (food: 51.6%; beverage: 40.5%) than clearly healthy ones (food: 11.2%; beverage: 19.6%) could be especially problematic. Moreover, women (56.5%; men: 47.4%) and African American characters (62.7%; Caucasians: 51.5%; Other: 44.7%) were significantly more often associated with unhealthy foods, which could prompt stereotypes of such individuals.
