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Scholarship on alternative organizations and cooperatives has argued that networks and intermediaries foster organizational form stability and protect collectivist-democratic organizations from rationalization as well as decoupling. This study of field-level organizing among food co-ops in the United States shows that rather than buffering collectivist organizations from conventional market and rationalization pressures, meta-organizations can also serve as a conduit for rationalizing pressures, subjecting vulnerable organizations to what I call quasi-coercive isomorphism. Using interviews of field participants, ethnographic observations of conferences, and content analysis of organizational documents, I examine the formation and impact of National Co+op Grocers, a meta-cooperative created to leverage scale and pool resources among food co-ops. I find that this meta-organization enforced grocery industry-oriented norms of operation, management, and presentation among its member organizations in return for providing mutual liability and economies of scale. This focus on select operationally scalable processes and structures for support generated isomorphic pressures that exposed, rather than sheltered, co-ops, especially smaller, resource-poor ones, from industry standards. The meta-organization thus promoted a sectorized model of more marketized practices for the field’s cooperatives that pushed co-ops to adopt conventional grocery store practices and distanced them from the practices of other cooperative form fields. Moreover, the potential of cooperative form-specific elements for scaling was not realized: collective ownership and democratic governance remained local concerns. These findings suggest that whether meso-level cooperation among cooperatives can support alternative form maintenance is contingent on the structure and scope of the meta-organization and on the perceived scalability of operational and governance elements of the cooperative organizational form.

Fundamental engineering limits to very high speed electronics switching systems are employed. These limitations are caused by packaging and interconnection constraints, as well as device switching speed. From the device viewpoint, reactive parasitics caused by the packaging/interconnection scenario are discussed. From the systems level perspective, overall delay, delay variance and power consumption are explored. The important problem of clock distribution in high speed synchronous digital systems is discussed. These limitations are then revisited with photonics implementation in mind. Comparisons are made between the electrical and photonic approaches. Some engineering limits to the photonic alternative are laid out.

The paper describes a new electro‐optical board technology, based on the discrete wiring principle. Isolated copper wires are embedded in the circuit board to realise the electrical interconnections. Glass optical fibres are embedded to obtain optical interconnections. The technology allows for crossovers and for electrical and optical interconnections on one layer of interconnection. As the technology can be applied on the level of package or multichip module, circuit board and backpanel, it has the ability to offer a complete solution for chip to chip electrical and optical interconnections. The paper will describe the basic manufacturing technology of the boards. The benefits of the technology from a system designer's viewpoint will be addressed. The problem of coupling light in and out of the embedded optical fibres will be discussed and the realisation of a first on‐board optical link via embedded optical fibres will be described.

The purpose of the chapter is to explore the relation between women’s healthy eating intention and food attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and barriers with a focus on the effect of women’s income differences.

The research applies the Theory of Planned Behavior, including attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, perceived barriers, and ability opportunity resources. Close-ended survey responses of 704 women between ages 25 and 65 years, affluent and at-risk-of-poverty women in three EU-member countries were analyzed.

Women are mostly positively inclined towards healthy eating, and income does not differentiate women’s inclination. Influencing factors are perceived behavioral control, attitudes towards healthy eating, subjective norms, and level of knowledge regarding healthy food. Barriers, when present, are similar for lower or higher income women and relate to routinized family habits and food affordability and availability.

Future research should thoroughly investigate family network and structure features, with a focus on family food preferences and habits.

Encouraging women’s healthy behavior also impacts children and men, and vice-versa. There is need to target all family components with enjoyable, self-rewarding, emotionally gratifying, and pleasant tasting food.

Income is an overestimated driver in healthy food choices. Women are strongly influenced by personal and environmental factors, mainly personal control, feelings, and family habits.

The present paper explores Generation Z university students' clusters based on the consumption of daily fruits and vegetables in an emerging market economy, indicating young people's reasons to adopt a healthy diet.

Using cluster theory, the authors analyse Generation Z university students who consume fresh fruits and vegetables, highlighting aspects of a healthy diet, in compliance with the WHO recommendations and challenges.

Data collected from over 459 Generation Z university students point out the possibility of typologizing them into nine clusters: three consuming fresh fruit and six consuming fresh vegetables. Most cluster members are aware of the value of regular fresh fruit and vegetable consumption in order to maintain health and overall well-being, but the authors also identified a cluster called “urban, but sick humanists at the beginning of their professional careers”, for whom a healthy diet based on fruits and vegetables is not a priority.

Although this research only refers to consumers in the emergent economy Romania, it also allows the delimitation of specific categories which can be utilized by sector stakeholders, in order to identify issues addressed by each cluster member and to find the most appropriate solutions for encouraging/promoting a healthy diet.

The paper also raises awareness of the importance of fruit and vegetable consumption in other emerging economies, given the advancement of processed food and reduction of time available to cook healthy dishes.

The results contribute to extending studies conducted on emerging markets concerning fruit and vegetable consumption among Generation Z university students, highlighting the importance of a healthy diet, and the proper targeting of these consumer clusters by fresh fruit and vegetable producers and distributors.

Adequate vegetable consumption is fundamental to a healthy balanced diet; however, global compliance with recommendations is poor which is particularly important for young adults as they form food consumption habits. There is a growing interest in the circular economy of hospitality and sustainability of current dietary patterns in light of climate change and an expanding global population. The food value chain needs to be considered both vertically and horizontally where the research and development (R&D) investment is optimised by being “joined up” and not fragmentary; in addition, consumer trade-offs of health vs for example sensory appeal are taken into consideration. The purpose of this study was to identify factors predicting acceptance of vegetable dishes by young adults and present a roadmap that can be used for dish development and healthful marketing.

This study used the health belief model (HBM) as framework to investigate key factors that encourage vegetable intake by young adults using an online questionnaire sample of 444 enrolled in undergraduate programs at universities in Brazil.

Structural modelling showed that vegetable consumption frequency was positively influenced by Health concerns, Naturalness and Self-efficacy (including cooking skills), whereas Sensory factors and Familiarity demonstrated a negative loading that might be related to unpleasantness.

Globally, there is a strong need to promote the consumption of vegetables as a public health policy priority but also to ameliorate barriers to action that could be facilitated by availability, dish development and healthful marketing in hospitality operations.

This study aimed to investigate changes in food consumption during the COVID-19 lockdown period in a sample of female college students in China. The study employed a dual processing approach that simultaneously investigates the effects of students' beliefs about the importance of healthy eating and the effect of emotional eating due to anxiety induced by the pandemic.

Data were collected from 645 female college students in China using a self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was used for the data analysis.

Beliefs about the importance of healthy eating have a greater impact on changes in food consumption than anxiety. Emotional eating was positively associated with changes in vegetable consumption. The findings reveal that a shift from “food as health” to “food as well-being” in the role of food in the food-related life of Chinese consumers is underway. “Food as health” remains important in food-related decision-making in China during the pandemic. Concurrently, a well-being centered or a more holistic perspective, including the psychological and emotional aspects of food, should be included in food-related research and health promotion in China.

This study contributes to the literature on reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic by simultaneously investigating both the cognitive impact of beliefs regarding the importance of healthy eating and the affective impact of anxiety on changes in food consumption due to COVID-19.

University students are one of the vulnerable groups in terms of having nutritional problems due to their lifestyle and social environment. This study aims to determine the consumption of fast food among university students and evaluate factors that may impact it, such as sociodemographic factors, body mass index (BMI) or nutritional habits.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among a random sample of 184 university students (47.8% men and 52.2% women) with a mean age of 21.1 ± 2.0 years. The survey included students’ sociodemographic characteristics, anthropometric measurements, nutritional habits and fast-food consumption. Chi-square test, t-test and binary logistic regression analysis were used depending on the characteristics of the data.

Results indicated that 39.7% of the students consumed fast food at least once in 15 days and preferred these foods for taste, workload and social activity. Consumption of fast food occurred at an earlier age in men (%13.6) and the portions were higher than portions of vegetables (p = 0.001). By using regression analysis, a statistically significant relationship was found between the frequency of fast-food consumption and age, gender, economic status, BMI, the amount of vegetables consumed daily and the habit of eating breakfast (p < 0.05).

It is planned to reach more students in the study. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, transportation to students became difficult or could not be reached.

This study is one of the rare studies examining students’ orientation to fast food. The number of studies in this field in Turkey is limited.

Apples have always been considered a healthy product able to provide curative properties to consumers. In Italy, there is a long tradition of apple consumption and production both as a fresh product and as processed food. However, as with many other products, the consumption of fruits and vegetables and, more specifically apples, has been drastically affected by the first lockdown in 2020. In this project, the authors investigate whether the change in consumption habits had long-lasting consequences beyond 2020 and what are the main eating motivations, food-related behavior and socio-demographic affecting the consumption of fruits and vegetables after the pandemic.

The authors ran two online surveys with 1,000 Italian consumers across a year (from October 2021 to December 2022). In the study, participants answered questions about their consumption habits and their eating motives. Out of 1,000 consumers, the authors included in the final analysis only the participants who answered both surveys, leaving a final sample of 651 consumers.

The results show that participants have allocated more budget to fruit and vegetables after the lockdown than before it. Moreover, consumers reported an average increase in the consumption of apples. However, the increase was more pronounced for people aged between 30 and 50 years old and identified as female. After showing the difference across time, a cluster analysis identified three main segments that differ in their eating motives, place of purchase and area of residence.

Overall, the results contribute to a better understanding of how the global pandemic is still affecting people's daily life. Moreover, the findings can be used to guide the marketing and communication strategies of companies in the food sector.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates changes in the consumption of fruits and vegetables, and, more specifically, apples, in Italy more than one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the study proposes a classification of consumers based on their habits in a time frame during which the COVID-19 wave was at its bottom which is not currently present in the literature.