Food Policy Journal Watch: November 2014
Digital Junk: Food and Beverage Marketing on Facebook (American Journal of Public Health)(Annual Review of Environment and Resources)
“We analyzed 13 international pages and 14 Australian-based brand pages; 4 brands (Subway, Coca-Cola, Slurpee, Maltesers) had both national and international pages. Pages widely used marketing features unique to social media that increase consumer interaction and engagement. Common techniques were competitions based on user-generated content, interactive games, and apps. Four pages included apps that allowed followers to place an order directly through Facebook. Adolescent and young adult Facebook users appeared most receptive to engaging with this content.” Read the article>>>
The report presents five broad categories of digital marketing techniques that are used routinely by fast food, snack food, and soft drink companies to target children and adolescents. Some of these practices are inherently unfair, others raise serious privacy concerns, and still others are deceptive.
The notion of cultural acceptability is often called forth as a necessary component of food security, yet there is a lack of guidance in literature and policy as to how to operationalize this concept. Without specifying what cultural acceptability means, the concept risks becoming watered down, discounted, or obsolete in practice. This review strives to speak to those gaps by cataloging the connotations and implications of cultural acceptability in literature on urban food policy, food security, and associated topics
Though parental education is widely perceived to be an important determinant of child nutrition outcomes, there remain significant uncertainties about whether maternal or paternal education matters most, whether there are increasing or decreasing returns to parental education, and whether these returns are robust given that recent gains in enrollment have not always translated into commensurate gains in learning outcomes. In this paper we investigate these questions through a statistical analysis of child growth data forapproximately 99,000 children in 19 countries with some of the highest burdens of undernutrition.
Exploring opinions and intentions regarding the soon-to-be implemented menu labeling legislation of restaurant owners and management nationwide.
This study investigated the prevalence of food insecurity among community college students (N = 301) and the relationship between food insecurity and student grade point average (GPA). It employed a cross-sectional intercept survey, utilizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Household Food Security Survey Module, student self-reported GPA, and demographic variables.
Between November 2012 and May 2013, a desk review of ten databases was conducted to identify principles, conceptual frameworks, underlying theories, and strengths and limitations of existing accountability frameworks for institutional performance to construct a new framework relevant to promoting healthy food environments.
A three-group repeated-measures experimental study was conducted to determine whether providing information about calories and exercise equivalents at the point-of-choice for a fast food meal would decrease calories ordered or consumed among overweight and obese 18-34-year-old women at a public university in southern Florida in 2009, and to investigate any correlation with consumption with prior dieting history, qualified as dietary restraint in this study.
The goal of the present commentary is to address the research gaps that still exist before there can be a consensus on how best to define nutrient density, highlight the situation in the USA and relate this to wider, international efforts in nutrient profiling.
Changing beverage consumption patterns reflect positive trends in the form of reduced intake of SSBs, whole milk, and total calories from beverages. Although the consumption of sport drinks, energy drinks, and low-calorie beverages have increased, their contribution to total beverage intake remains small.
