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PubMed1999

Families: accounts of the causal processes in food choice.

Much of the previous research into the processes involved in food choice has made use of methodologies that neglect the social and familial context in which such decisions are made. The study reported here used a different approach to gather qualitative data from family members regarding their decision processes in the form of naturally expressed social explanations or attributions. Interviews were conducted with 149 family members from a total of 83 British families from four locations. The participants were encouraged to discuss their own personal experience of food choice, including their dietary decisions and behaviours and the factors involved in the process, using systemic interviewing techniques. The 52 h of interview material obtained were subjected to attributional analysis using the Leeds Attributional Coding System (LACS), a qualitative research tool designed for work with families. The data, in the form of 7062 fully coded belief statements or attributions, provided some preliminary observations of the way that families understand and socially explain their food-based decisions. The approach offers a different perspective on family food choice to those provided through more traditional experimental research and surveys.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

The choice of fat-free vs. regular-fat fudge: the effects of liking for the alternative and the restraint status.

Non-restrained and restrained American women (N=157) chose a portion of a fat-free or regular-fat hot fudge, to be eaten on a portion of fat-free or regular-fat (depending on the experimental condition) ice cream. The subjects had tasted and rated samples of both fudge and ice cream earlier in the same session and, prior to the choice, they were informed of their own hedonic ratings of both fudges and of the respective fat contents ("fat-free" vs. "regular-fat"). The higher the hedonic difference (fat-free minus regular-fat) between hot fudge samples and the higher the individual restraint score, the more likely was the choice of the fat-free option. Also, the less hungry the subjects were prior to testing, the more likely they were to choose the fat-free version. On average, the hedonic difference between the hot fudge samples was roughly -0.5 for those choosing the fat-free option, while the corresponding value for subjects choosing the regular-fat version was -3 (9-point scale). The type of ice cream did not affect the choice. The data demonstrate the effects of a food (its hedonic quality), person (restrained status), and context (perceived hunger) on food choice.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Polychlorinated biphenyls, polybrominated biphenyls, and dioxin reduction during processing/cooking food.

This chapter presents information on the levels of environmental contaminants found in recent market basket surveys as well as the effect of processing and cooking on the reduction of these contaminants. Although consumers have expressed concern over the level of environmental contaminants in the food supply, market basket surveys involving over 8,000 analyses of foods ready-to-eat, found measurable amounts (ppb levels) of PCBs in only 24 foods. Processing/cooking has been shown to reduce PCBs by 20-100%. Although PBBs got into the food chain as the result of one incredible accident and thus are not expected to be found in foods today, cooking/processing was also effective in reducing PBBs. Dioxins are the result of combustion processes and chemical manufacturing processes. TCDD levels found in Great Lakes fish were in the low part per trillion level. Again, cooking and processing resulted in substantially less TCDD in fish as eaten.

Animals↗
PubMed1996

Barriers to application of genetically modified lactic acid bacteria.

To increase the acceptability of food products containing genetically modified microorganisms it is necessary to provide in an early stage to the consumers that the product is safe and that the product provide a clear benefit to the consumer. To comply with the first requirement a systematic approach to analyze the probability that genetically modified lactic acid bacteria will transform other inhabitants of the gastro- intestinal (G/I) tract or that these lactic acid bacteria will pick up genetic information of these inhabitants has been proposed and worked out to some degree. From this analysis it is clear that reliable data are still missing to carry out complete risk assessment. However, on the basis of present knowledge, lactic acid bacteria containing conjugative plasmids should be avoided. Various studies show that consumers in developed countries will accept these products when they offer to them health or taste benefits or a better keepability. For the developing countries the biggest challenge for scientists is most likely to make indigenous fermented food products with strongly improved microbiological stability due to broad spectra bacteriocins produced by lactic acid bacteria. Moreover, these lactic acid bacteria may contribute to health.

Consumer Behavior↗
PubMed1996

Environmental Assessment of Packaging: The Consumer Point of View

When marketing environmentally responsible packaged products, the producer is confronted with consumer beliefs concerning the environmental friendliness of packaging materials. When making environmentally conscious packaging decisions, these consumer beliefs should be taken into account alongside the technical guidelines. Dutch consumer perceptions of the environmental friendliness of packaged products are reported and compared with the results of a life-cycle analysis assessment. It is shown that consumers judge environmental friendliness mainly from material and returnability. Furthermore, the consumer perception of the environmental friendliness of packaging material is based on the postconsumption waste, whereas the environmental effects of production are ignored. From the consumer beliefs concerning environmental friendliness implications are deduced for packaging policy and for environmental policy.KEY WORDS: Consumer behavior; Environment; Food; Packaging; Perception; Waste

Journal Article↗
PubMed1997

[School type, school stress and health problems in 17-year-old Zurich middle school students].

In the present study a sample of 661 seventeen-year-old students of different undergraduate colleges of the Canton of Zurich were investigated by questionnaire. They were asked about various psychosocial variables, their consumer behavior, school-life and their physical and mental health. The aim of the study was to investigate whether students of different college types differ in regard to their psychosocial and morbidity characteristics: Out of the sample two subgroups were formed: Students of the traditional college type B (classical/modern languages) and C (mathematics and sciences) on the one hand, and students of the modern college type D (modern languages) and L (modern languages/fine arts) on the other. Regarding sociodemographic variables and social contact there were no differences for both sexes between the two college types. Female students of the modern colleges reported to drink alcohol more regularly. There was a significant difference, however, taking college type into account in regard to eating behavior, body image, and physical and mental complaints. Girls of the modern colleges showed more symptoms and disturbances on all applied check lists. Regardless the college type, the results indicated that low academic grades and stressfully assessed school life were accompanied with significantly higher symptom scores in female students. The findings of the study indicate that targeted concepts for prevention and health promotion should be advanced especially in the classes of the modern colleges.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

New directions for community mental health centers.

Community Mental Health Centers and other quasi-public authorities are operating within a larger health market characterized by the rapid unfolding of a number of key trends in consumer behavior, provider supply, and financing. Each of these trends, though not readily apparent, is strongly reflected in the specialty mental health sector. Mental health managers are faced with fundamental choices about the direction of their respective organizations and the adequacy of their resources to proceed. Mr. Kipp outlines the market dynamics at issue, describes three basic alternatives, and offers some guidelines for management in charting a course.

Community Mental Health Centers↗
PubMed2003

Biosurveillance applying scan statistics with multiple, disparate data sources.

Researchers working on the Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections System (DoD-GEIS) pilot system, the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE), have applied scan statistics for early outbreak detection using both traditional and nontraditional data sources. These sources include medical data indexed by International Classification of Disease, 9th Revision (ICD-9) diagnosis codes, as well as less-specific, but potentially timelier, indicators such as records of over-the-counter remedy sales and of school absenteeism. Early efforts employed the Kulldorff scan statistic as implemented in the SaTScan software of the National Cancer Institute. A key obstacle to this application is that the input data streams are typically based on time-varying factors, such as consumer behavior, rather than simply on the populations of the component subregions. We have used both modeling and recent historical data distributions to obtain background spatial distributions. Data analyses have provided guidance on how to condition and model input data to avoid excessive clustering. We have used this methodology in combining data sources for both retrospective studies of known outbreaks and surveillance of high-profile events of concern to local public health authorities. We have integrated the scan statistic capability into a Microsoft Access-based system in which we may include or exclude data sources, vary time windows separately for different data sources, censor data from subsets of individual providers or subregions, adjust the background computation method, and run retrospective or simulated studies.

Bioterrorism↗
PubMed2006

Newborn screening for cystic fibrosis: parents' preferences regarding counseling at the time of infants' sweat test.

Newborn screening (NBS) protocols for cystic fibrosis (CF) are the first regional population-based programs to incorporate DNA analysis into their procedures. Research about these programs can inform policy and practice regarding how best to counsel families with abnormal NBS results. The grounded theory method guided interviews with 33 families whose infants had abnormal CF NBS results. A dimensional analysis of these interviews provided a theoretical framework describing parents' preferences regarding counseling during their infant's sweat test appointment. This framework describes the contexts and characteristics of the two main dimensions of parents' preferences: factual information and emotional support. Factual information included learning about the probability of a CF diagnosis, CF disease facts, sweat test procedure, and CF genetics. Social support consisted of offering parents a choice about the timing and amount of CF information, showing empathy for their distress, instilling hope, personalizing counseling, and providing hospitality. This framework also explains the consequences of counseling that matched versus mismatched parental preferences in these domains. Counseling that matched parents preferences reduced parents' distress while mismatched counseling tended to increase parents' worry about their infant.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1992

An alternative framework for evaluating welfare losses in the health care market.

A recurring theme in the health economics literature is that 'excess' health insurance reduces society's welfare. This proposition is considered to be a truism by most health economists. Feldman and Morrisey (1990) report that two-thirds of American and Canadian health economists surveyed agree with the statement that, 'the level and type of health insurance held by most U.S. families generate substantial welfare loss due to over-consumption of medical services'. Consequently, most research in the area has attempted to identify the exact dollar value of this welfare loss. In this note, I will try to show that the traditional method of calculating welfare losses from excess health insurance is severely flawed because it is based on assumptions about consumer behavior that are not supported by the available empirical evidence. Furthermore, the methodology masks other, potentially greater societal welfare losses that are likely to exist in the health care sector, and blinds us from seeking the most effective public policy remedies. This note suggests an alternative framework for considering welfare losses based on researchers' evaluations of medical necessity.

Community Participation↗
PubMed1993

Economics, health and health economics: HYEs (healthy-years equivalent) versus QALYs (quality-adjusted live-year)

This paper responds to Culyer and Wagstaff's (CW) and Buckingham's (B) arguments. We refute their claim about the equivalence of HYEs and QALYs; they fail to distinguish between choice under uncertainty and under certainty. CW assume that all individuals have a specific form of utility function, which yields their conclusion of equivalence. B's arguments confuse the measurement technique and the utility theory from which it stems; his argument about the normative superiority of the QALY construct is inconsistent with economic thinking. The HYE, by being compatible with the principles of economics, is superior to the QALY for economic evaluations of health care interventions.

Canada↗
PubMed1983

Factors influencing choice of hospitals: a case study of the northern part of Oyo State, Nigeria.

A total number of 859 patients were interviewed in the four hospitals that served Oyo Health Zone, Nigeria in 1979 on why they chose particular hospitals for treatment. The following factors in descending order of magnitude were identified as influencing their choice: nearness, quality of service, relative living in hospital town, finance, ease of transport, religion and connections with hospital staff. Although nearness was the leading factor, it accounted for only 31.8% of the total responses. In effect, about 70% of patients' behaviour are explained by other factors. This study points to the inappropriateness of the emphasis usually placed on linear distance as determining attractiveness of health service supply centres. In reality, a maze of interactions among spatial and non-spatial variables is at work in the choice of hospitals. Policy decisions should take cognizance of this if satisfactory health service to a majority of patients is to be achieved.

Choice Behavior↗
PubMed2004

Preference for natural: instrumental and ideational/moral motivations, and the contrast between foods and medicines.

Preference for natural refers to the fact that in a number of domains, especially food, people prefer natural entities to those which have been produced with human intervention. Two studies with undergraduate students and representative American adults indicate that the preference for natural is substantial, and stronger for foods than for medicines. Although healthfulness is often given as a reason for preferring natural foods, even when healthfulness or effectiveness (for medicines) of the natural and artificial exemplars is specified as equivalent, the great majority of people who demonstrate a preference for natural continue to prefer natural. In addition, when the natural and artificial exemplars are specified to be chemically identical, a majority of people who prefer natural continue to prefer it. This suggests that a substantial part of the motivation for preferring natural is ideational (moral or aesthetic), as opposed to instrumental (healthiness/effectiveness or superior sensory properties).

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Awareness, acceptance of and willingness to buy genetically modified foods in Urban China.

There is concern about the extent to which consumers will accept genetically modified (GM) foods if they are commercialized in China. The evidence from the existing literature is mixed and sometimes confusing. The objective of this study is to conduct a large in-depth face-to-face in-house survey that examines the consumers' awareness, acceptance of and willingness to buy GM foods in China. To achieve this objective, a well-designed consumer survey was conducted in 11 cities of five provinces in Eastern China in 2002 and 2003. The results indicate that despite much less information on GM foods available publicly in China, more than two thirds of consumers in urban areas have heard of GM foods. But their knowledge on biotechnology was limited. Chinese consumers' acceptance of and willingness to buy GM foods was much higher than in other countries. Chinese consumers also demonstrated great variance in their acceptance of different GM foods. Information and prices of GM foods were two important factors affecting consumers' attitudes toward GM foods. Based on the findings of this study and given that our sample is in the more developed eastern Urban China, we conclude that the commercialization of GM foods is not likely to receive great resistance from the consumers in China.

Awareness↗
PubMed2006

More politics, stronger consumers? A new division of responsibility for food in the European Union.

In less than a decade, European food institutions have gone through a period of important reform. This reform was intended to address new challenges posed by a succession of food safety crises, the entry into the world markets of novel foods, and general public distrust of the actions of the European Commission. This paper sketches the most salient institutional changes that have occurred in the history of the European Union (EU). It also maps the redistribution of responsibilities in the European food system. After years of harmonisation in the name of free trade, in the mid-1990s food safety and consumer protection became the guiding principles of European food policy. Having described these changes, the paper suggests that a specifically European food policy style is emerging in juxtaposition with 'transatlantic' food policy.

Consumer Advocacy↗
PubMed2006

Consumer-perceived quality in 'traditional' food chains: the case of the Greek meat supply chain.

Recent food scares have increased consumer concern about meat safety. However, the Greek 'traditional' meat supply chain from producers to local butchers does not seem to realise the pressing consumer demand for certified meat quality. Or is it that, in such food chains, this demand is not so pressing yet? The present paper seeks to answer this question based on a survey conducted in the Athens area, involving a sample of 268 participants responsible for food purchasing decisions. The survey mainly aims to develop an integrated model of factors that affect consumer-perceived meat quality and to develop the profile of different consumer segments in relation to these perceptions. The substantial findings of the survey include the fact that, despite their enormous per capita consumption, the majority of consumers are not particularly involved in the meat-purchasing process. Rather they attach importance to visual intrinsic quality cues evaluated in a pre-purchasing context. In this respect, intrinsic quality cues are assigned a role similar to that of quality certification; coupled with the choice of traditional channels and the resulting personal relation with the butcher, they can be understood as efforts to decrease risk of the purchasing decision. Moreover, consumers with such behaviour seem to relate domestic country of origin of meat mostly with perceptions of general safety. Finally, a small, but promising trend with substantial marketing implications of frequent purchases of chicken and pork at supermarkets should not be ignored.

Adult↗