Search results

This paper aims to investigate three promotional publications produced by the Postum Cereal Company – A Trip Through Postumville (1920), How I Make Postum (1924) and The Wonderful Lunch Boxes (1925) – with the aim of understanding how language and other semiotic resources are used to promote its products as good and healthy choices.

The three publications were collected from the HathiTrust Digital Library and University of South Florida Tampa Special Collections. They were subjected to multimodal critical discourse analysis to tease out their subtle characteristics and how a combination of language, image, colour, typography and composition are used to represent certain ideas and values related to health and well-being.

The publications subscribe to three distinct genres – “inside the factory”, “friendly spokesperson” and “fictional world” – each of which are aimed at different target audiences. The first seeks to promote Postum as an open and transparent company; the second to promote Postum as a company that cares about its consumers; and the third to promote the health benefits of Postum in a fun and accessible manner. Nonetheless, they are united in their overall objective to link the regular consumption of Postum as essential for good health.

To date, few studies have been conducted on the Postum Cereal Company, while the limited research conducted on promotional publications has tended to overlook discourses of health and well-being. The three genres outlined in this study, thus, have the potential to foster a reappraisal of promotional publications and showcase their ability to offer new understandings on historical approaches to marketing, particularly the link with health and science.

This study aims to analyze the impact of global climate change on food security in the East African Community (EAC) region, using panel data analysis for five countries, over 2000-2014.

The determinants of food security are expressed as a function of rainfall, temperature, land area under cereal production, and population size. The paper used pooled fixed effects to estimate the relationship among these variables.

Findings show that food security in EAC is adversely affected by temperature. However, precipitation and increasing areas cultivated with cereal crops will be beneficial to ensure everyone's food security.

Actions for mitigating global warming are important for EAC to consolidate the region’s economic, political and social development/stability.

This study aims to examine the impacts of climate change (CC), measured average annual rainfall, average annual temperature and carbon dioxide (CO₂e) on cereal production (CPD) in Bangladesh by using the annual dataset from 1988–2014, with the incorporation of cereal cropped area (CCA), financial development (FD), energy consumption (EC) and rural labor force as important determinants of CPD.

This study used an auto-regressive distributive lag (ARDL) model and several econometric approaches to validate the long- and short-term cointegration and the causality directions, respectively, of the scrutinized variables.

Results of the bounds testing approach confirmed the stable long-term connections among the underlying variables. The estimates of the ARDL model indicated that rainfall improves CPD in the short-and long-term. However, CO₂e has a significantly negative impact on CPD both in the short-and long-term. Results further showed that temperature has an adverse effect on CPD in the short-term. Among other determinants, CCA, FD and EC have significantly positive impacts on CPD in both cases. The outcomes of Granger causality indicated that a significant two-way causal association is running from all variables to CPD except temperature and rainfall. The connection between CPD and temperature is unidirectional, showing that CPD is influenced by temperature. All other variables also have a valid and significant causal link among each other. Additionally, the findings of variance decomposition suggest that results are robust, and all these factors have a significant influence on CPD in Bangladesh.

These findings have important policy implications for Bangladesh and other developing countries. For instance, introduce improved cereal crop varieties, increase CCA and familiarizes agricultural credits through formal institutions on relaxed conditions and on low-interest rates could reduce the CPD’s vulnerability to climate shocks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to examine the short- and long-term impacts of CC on CPD in Bangladesh over 1988–2014. The authors used various econometrics techniques, including the ARDL approach, the Granger causality test based on the vector error correction model framework and the variance decomposition method.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of adding Aloe vera powder (AVP) in the production of mahewu with the aim of determining its shelf-life and sensory qualities.

Mahewu was produced at home (Sample B) and in the laboratory (Sample C) using a standard home-made procedure with the addition of AVP. A control mahewu (Sample A) was produced without AVP. Shelf-life was determined by following the chemical, microbiological, physical properties at 36 ± 2 °C for 60 days and the sensory properties of the products were also evaluated.

Physicochemical analysis revealed decreases in pH ranging between 3.3 and 2.4 from day 15–60 days of storage in all three samples. There was a significant increase (p < 0.05) in titratable acidity (0.2–1.8%) of all mahewu samples during storage. Total soluble solids were different amongst the samples from day 15 to day 60. The colour of the products was significantly different (p = 0.05) with respect to L*, a* and b* throughout the storage period. Microbiological results revealed an increase in coliforms bacteria, lactic acid bacteria, and yeast during storage. Sensory analysis showed that the control mahewu was more preferred than AVP added mahewu.

The study may help small-scale brewers to increase the shelf-life of mahewu.

Results of this study showed that the addition of AVP extended shelf-life of mahewu up to 15 days at 36 ± 2 °C.

Micronutrient malnutrition is a public health problem in many developing countries, especially in the poorest population segments. Fortification and other food-based approaches, such as using more nutritious ingredients in processing, could help to address this problem, but little is known about poor consumers’ attitudes toward nutritionally enhanced foods. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether poor consumers in Africa would purchase foods with more nutritious ingredients and the related willingness and ability to pay.

A survey and choice experiment were conducted with 600 randomly selected households in the poorest neighborhoods of Nairobi (Kenya) and Kampala (Uganda). Participants were asked to choose between various alternatives of porridge flour with different types of nutritional attributes. The data were analyzed with mixed logit models. Porridge flour is widely consumed among the urban poor, so that the example can also provide interesting broader lessons.

Poor consumers welcome foods that are micronutrient-fortified or include new types of nutritious ingredients. However, willingness to pay for nutritional attributes is small. New ingredients that are perceived to have little effect on taste and appearance are seen more positively than ingredients that may change food products more notably.

New nutritionally enhanced foods have good potential in markets for the poor, if they build on local consumption habits and are not associated with significant price increases.

This is among the first studies to explicitly analyze poor consumers’ preferences for nutritionally enhanced foods.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of urbanicity on rural–urban migrants' dietary diversity and nutrition intake and whether its effect differs across various urban environments of migrants.

Using the individual- and time-invariant fixed effects (two-way FE) model and five-year panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this paper estimates a linear and nonlinear relationship between urbanicity and nutrition. The paper also explores the spatial heterogeneity between rural–urban migrants and rural–suburban migrants. Dietary diversity, total energy intake and the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat, respectively, are used to measure rural–urban migrants' nutrition on both quality and quantity aspects.

The study shows that rural–urban migrants have experienced access to more diverse, convenient and prepared foods, and the food variety consumed is positively associated with community urbanicity. Energy intake is positively and significantly affected by community urbanicity, and it also varies with per capita household income. The obvious inverse U-shaped relationship reveals that improving community urbanicity promotes an increase in the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat at a decreasing rate, until reaching the urbanicity index threshold of 66.69 and 54.26, respectively.

This paper focuses on the nutritional status of rural–urban migrants, an important pillar for China's development, which is often neglected in the research. It examines the urbanicity and the nutrition of migrants in China, which provides a new perspective to understand the dietary and nutritional intake among migrants in the economic and social development. Moreover, the urbanicity index performs better at measuring urban feathers rather than the traditional rural/urban dichotomous classification.

This study aims to examine the effect of climate variability on smallholders’ crop income and the determinants of indigenous adaptation strategies in three districts (Mieso, Goba-koricha and Doba) of West Hararghe Zone of Ethiopia. These three districts are located in high-moisture-stress areas because of crop season rainfall variability.

Primary data collected from 400 sample households were used for identifying factors that affect households’ crop income. The study used ordinary least square (OLS) regression to examine the effect of climate variability. Given this, binary logit model was used to assess smallholders’ adaptation behavior. Finally, the study used multinomial logistic regression to identify determinants of smallholders’ indigenous adaptation strategies.

The OLS regression result shows that variability in rainfall during the cropping season has a significant and negative effect, and cropland and livestock level have a positive effect on farmers’ crop income. The multinomial logistic regression result reveals that households adopt hybrid crops (maize and sorghum) and dry-sowing adaptation strategies if there is shortage during the cropping season. Variability in rainfall at the time of sowing and the growing are main factors in the area’s crop production. Cropland increment has positive and significant effect on employing each adaptation strategy. The probability of adopting techniques such as water harvesting, hybrid seeds and dry sowing significantly reduces if a household has a large livestock.

The three districts are remote and accessibility is difficult without due support from institutions. Thus, this study was conducted on the basis of the primary data collected by the researchers after securing grant from Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).

University students are a unique population with great potential to adopt eating habits that promote positive human and planetary health outcomes. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the current perceptions of sustainable eating behaviours among the students and to examine the determinants of sustainable eating behaviours.

Data were collected from December 2020 to May 2021 through focus group discussions among university students in Ontario, facilitated through synchronous online sessions. There were 21 student participants during the course of five focus group sessions (4–5 participants per session) from various departments within the university. The discussions were transcribed and analyzed for main themes and concepts using open coding; deductive coding based on the framework by Deliens et al. as well as the literature; and inductive coding for emerging themes.

The students had different perceptions about what constituted sustainable eating behaviours, some of which were not based on fact. A variety of individual, environmental (macro, micro and social) and university characteristics were mentioned as factors influencing sustainable food choices, with “food literacy” and “campus food” being the top two factors.

This study presents a novel and holistic overview of how sustainable eating behaviours and sustainable foods are perceived among university students and identifies the perceived determinants of adopting sustainable eating behaviours. This study helps with identifying opportunities to promote sustainable eating behaviours among university students and the design/implementation of informed interventions and policies aimed at improving eating behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the usefulness of nutrition labels in Thailand during nutrition transition from traditional to modern diets that increase salt, sugar, and calorie intake and to note socio-demographic interactions and associations with consumption of transitional processed foods.

The authors studied 42,750 distance learning Open University adults aged 23-96 years in 2013 residing nationwide and participating in an ongoing community-based prospective cohort study. The authors used multivariable logistic regression to relate nutrition label experiences (“read”, “good understand”, “frequent use”), socio-demographic factors, and consumption of four transitional foods. These foods included “unhealthy” instant foods, carbonated soft drinks, and sweet drinks, or “healthy” milk.

Overall, two-thirds reported good understanding and frequent use of nutrition labels. Unhealthy transition-indicator processed foods were frequently consumed: instant foods (7 per cent), (carbonated) soft drinks (15 per cent), and sweet drinks (41 per cent). Frequent users of nutrition labels (e.g. females, older persons, professionals) were less likely to consume unhealthy indicator foods. Those with the most positive overall nutrition label experience (“read” + “good understanding” + “frequent use”) had the best indicator food profiles: instant foods (odds ratio (OR) 0.63; 95%CI, 0.56-0.70); soft drinks (OR 0.56; 95%CI, 0.52-0.61); sweet drinks (OR 0.79; 95%CI, 0.74-0.85); milk (OR 1.87; 95%CI, 1.74-2.00).

Knowledge protected – those with most nutrition label experience were least likely to consume unhealthy foods. Results support government regulated nutrition labels, expanding to include sweet drinks. The study is remarkable for its large size and nationwide footprint. Study subjects were educated, represent Thais of the future, and show high awareness of transition-indicator foods.

The purpose of this paper is to deliver a structured literature review of existing literature on agri-fresh food supply chain quality (AFSCQ) over a period of 23 years (1994 to mid-2016) and provide a platform for practitioners and researchers trying to identify the existing state of work, gaps in current research, and future directions in the field of AFSCQ.

The existing literature is classified on the basis of several classes like number of publications per year, journal-wise publications, studies across various countries, growth of empirical research, data analysis methods or tool used, issues related to supply chain quality as well as performance measurement (with respect to entity of analysis, level of analysis and element of exchange).

Most of the research publications discuss issues in developed countries, while relatively lesser publications are available on issues in developing countries. Hence, larger opportunities in the field of AFSCQ are available in developing countries. Empirical research is also growing in the field of AFSCQ. Largely research publications make use of “case study” research approach and “statistical analysis” as a quantitative tool of research. The literature is also categorized under the various issues of supply chain quality such as sustainability management, information management, logistic management, collaboration and coordination management, strategic management, demand management, inventory management, food safety, performance management, supply chain integration, supplier management, quality management, etc. It was found that in the majority of articles, information management, sustainability management, and logistics management are very critical issues as far as AFSCQ is concerned. Performance measurement of agri-fresh food supply chain is also on a growing stage. It is also an integral part of AFSCQ.

Most of the prior reviews are concentrated on a particular issue as production and distribution planning for agri-foods, temperature monitoring, corporate and consumer social responsibility, traceability system and ignore the wider perception. There exists a necessity of having a detailed review to cover up all the issues in AFSCQ. This review fills this gap in the extant AFSCQ literature.