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1 – 10 of 606Claudia Giacoman, Daniella Leal and Valentina Rivera
The purpose of this paper is to explore the daily rhythms of eating, namely, the times at which food intake occurs during a day-long period, in Santiago, Chile.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the daily rhythms of eating, namely, the times at which food intake occurs during a day-long period, in Santiago, Chile.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this research come from a first time-use survey applied in Santiago in 2007 and 2008, which works with a retrospective activity journal to document the amount of time dedicated to different activities during the 24 hours of the previous day. Descriptive analysis and multinomial regressions were performed on a sample size of 2,282 cases, corresponding to those individuals over the age of 12 who responded to the daily activity prompt in full.
Findings
This study shows that people in Santiago tend to eat according to the same timetables (morning, midday and evening) and that socio-demographic variables have limited influence on the synchronization of this intake between Monday and Friday.
Research limitations/implications
The data did not allow for the exploration of the duration of food intake, commensality and its variation over time.
Practical implications
These data reveal that, for Santiago residents, eating is far from becoming de-structured towards a mode of constant grazing throughout the day, contradicting the thesis of alimentary modernity.
Originality/value
These results yield evidence that calls into question the applicability of the thesis of alimentary modernity within a Latin American context, which has not before been subject to investigation.
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Susanna Raulio, Eva Roos and Ritva Prättälä
This study aims to examine the availability of worksite canteens to Finnish employees, and the associations between canteen availability and the employee's sociodemographic…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the availability of worksite canteens to Finnish employees, and the associations between canteen availability and the employee's sociodemographic background and workplace characteristics. A further aim was to study the employees’ lunch place choices according to the sociodemographic factors of the employees and the characteristics of the workplace when a worksite canteen is available.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were obtained from cross‐sectional health surveys among Finnish adults in 2005‐2007. A total of 2,659 male and 2,926 female employed Finns – except farmers – ranging in age from 19 to 64 were chosen for the analyses from the surveys. The data were analyzed by multiple logistic regression models.
Findings
A worksite canteen was available for 70 percent of female and 60 percent of male employees, and more often to employees with higher education and in a higher occupational class and to those working at bigger workplaces. If a canteen was not available, employees mostly ate packed lunches. Roughly 50 percent of those who had a worksite canteen available ate there; employees in a higher occupational class did so more often than the others. Even when a canteen was available, people with lower education or in a lower occupational class preferred packed lunches.
Practical implications
The frequency of using worksite canteens could be influenced not only by means related to individual choices, but also by improving the structural conditions at work – like unavailability of worksite canteen – that is found to pose barrier to canteen use.
Originality/value
No previous study of this kind has been done, even though it has been observed that worksite canteen meals are important for the nutrition, health, and productivity of Finnish employees.
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Søren Bøye Olsen, Jürgen Meyerhoff, Morten Raun Mørkbak and Ole Bonnichsen
Fatigue effects related to answering a sequence of choice tasks have received much scrutiny in the stated choice experiments (SCE) literature. However, decision fatigue related to…
Abstract
Purpose
Fatigue effects related to answering a sequence of choice tasks have received much scrutiny in the stated choice experiments (SCE) literature. However, decision fatigue related to the time of day when respondents answer questionnaires has been largely overlooked in this literature even though time of day related fatigue effects are well known in the psychology literature. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that variations in the time of day when respondents answer an online food choice experiment will translate into observable fatigue effects in the food choices.
Design/methodology/approach
An empirical SCE concerning food choices is conducted using a web-based questionnaire for interviews in a pre-recruited online panel of consumers. Timestamps collected during the online interviews provide knowledge about the time of day at which each respondent has answered the survey. This information is linked with knowledge from a food sociology survey on typical meal times as well as biophysical research linking food intake to blood sugar and mental energy in order to generate a proxy variable for each respondent’s level of mental energy when answering the food choice tasks in the questionnaire.
Findings
Results show evidence of a time of day effect on error variance in the stated food choices as well as the subsequently estimated market share predictions. Specifically, respondents provide less consistent answers during the afternoon than at other times of the day.
Originality/value
The results indicate that time of day can affect responses to an online survey through increased fatigue and correspondingly less choice consistency. Thus, especially online surveys might account for this in data analysis or even restrict accessibility to the online survey for certain times of day.
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Cecilia Díaz-Méndez and Javier Callejo
The paper aims to offer information regarding the degree of homogenization of eating times in the UK and Spain. The objective is to compare two societies by the ways their…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to offer information regarding the degree of homogenization of eating times in the UK and Spain. The objective is to compare two societies by the ways their respective members organize the time spent on eating. Eating time organization is examined via two parameters: eating rhythms and their duration. The authors study the former by comparing daily meals timetables. Duration is studied via the time spent on eating and cooking.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from time-use surveys in Spain and the UK have been used for this work and various specific aspects of eating have been analyzed. First we consider the time devoted to eating; second, the timetables of the main intakes: third, the time spent cooking. Since in these sections it is noted that eating out is the behavior that most differentiates Spaniards and Britons, another section is given specifically to analyzing this behavior. Four categories were established by using a scaled variable to collect the time when the main activity is eating out: Home consumption, which shows are those that do not spend time eating or drinking out. Short time eating out: those who spend half an hour at most eating or drinking out. Average time eating out: those who spend between half an hour and one hour eating or drinking out. Long time eating out: those who spend more than an hour eating or drinking out. The comparison was made using respective sub-samples limited by age, between 16 and 65, as this is the potentially active population, integrated into the labor market in both countries.
Findings
British and Spanish timetables do not coincide. The British spread their important meals through the day, while Spaniards concentrate them between 1.30 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon (lunch) and between 8.30 and 11 o'clock in the evening (dinner). In the Spanish case this makes for important peaks of individuals eating at the same time: in the periods 2:20/2:30 and 21:10/21:20. In the UK they are spread more throughout the day and do not reach comparable maximums. In Spain an average of 20 minutes (23.2 minutes) more is spent on the main meals than in the UK. This difference is found mainly among those who eat at home. Differences in eating out are quite smaller for Britain and Spaniards. They make a greater collective effort to synchronize this activity and, therefore, to a greater extent the day's structure. In both societies an eating norm shared by their members that reproduces cultural aspects characteristic of each one is maintained. The evaluation of eating is in the time and place of meals. In the British case, compared with the Spanish one, there is a greater tendency to eat out and spend little time, without taking into account comparison with time spent going home to eat. This tendency points to a lesser value being given to the practice. If to this factor we add the differences in time both societies devote to cooking, longer in the Spanish one, the different nature of the social act of eating has in each society is highlighted.
Practical implications
Time analysis offers a new dimension to the exploration of the homogenization of food consumption. Other types of data used to establish international comparisons on food, especially data on food consumption, show a homogeneous image of food consumption among countries. Conversely, time analysis reveals a more heterogeneous image on this issue.
Originality/value
It offers the possibility to do multivariate analysis, which allows us to assess which variables are the most relevant to understand the amount of time devoted to the preparation of food.
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Margot Dyen, Lucie Sirieix, Sandrine Costa, Laurence Depezay and Eloïse Castagna
This paper aims to explore consumers’ experienced life and studies how practices interconnect and are organized on a daily basis. The objective is to contribute to a better…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore consumers’ experienced life and studies how practices interconnect and are organized on a daily basis. The objective is to contribute to a better understanding of how (or whether) it is possible to interfere with daily practices, as public policies pretend to do, to address several societal challenges (food waste, healthy eating, greenhouse gas reduction, social equity, etc.).
Design/methodology/approach
Using the concepts of routine, ritual and practice to understand the dynamics of daily life from a practice theories perspective, this study is based on a qualitative methodology combining a projective method of collage coupled with semi-structured interviews with 23 participants and, participant observation of shopping, cooking and mealtimes at home with 11 of the 23 participants.
Findings
Results show that the degree of systematization of practices defines different types of routine according to various systematization factors (time, commitment, social relations, material), suggesting a distinction between systematized, hybrid and partially systematized routines. Beyond the question of the degree of systematization of practices composing routines, results show that some practices are embedded in daily routines due to their ritualization.
Research limitations/implications
This work takes part of the debates on how to study households’ daily life, and challenges the understanding of daily life activity more globally than just by the prism of isolated actions. For that, this study uses the concepts of routines and rituals. They are relevant to describe and to capture the tangle of practices composing food activities. The study shows that the material dimensions, the pressure of time, the commitments and the social relations condition the global arrangement of the food practices in a variable way.
Practical implications
Such results offer new perspectives for intervening on households’ daily consumption by understanding the global dynamics of food routines.
Originality/value
This work contributes to a better understanding of consumers’ food practices and routines and to a practice-change perspective considering constrained and routinely constructed lives.
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Mahmut Bodur, Şahika Nur Bidar and Hülya Yardimci
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of chronotype on diet and sleep quality in healthy female students.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of chronotype on diet and sleep quality in healthy female students.
Design/methodology/approach
This study was conducted in 197 healthy female students and were grouped in morning, intermediate and evening types according to the Horne and Ostberg Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ). Assessment included sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI); physical activity level using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF); dietary intake using the 24-h dietary recall; and diet quality using the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015).
Findings
In this study, no significant difference was found between chronotypes in terms of general nutritional habits, age, smoking status, anthropometric measurements and physical activity levels. However, evening-type individuals had poor sleep quality (p = 0.040) and having issues about sleep latency (p = 0.049) and daytime dysfunction (p = 0.044), and they had had lower intake of whole fruit (p = 0.002), total fruit (p = 0.024) and higher consumption of refined grains (p < 0.001). Although, among chronotypes, there is no difference in the intake of protein, saturated fat, monounsaturated fatty acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids and dietary fiber, evening-type individuals’ daily energy (p = 0.013), fat (p = 0.021) and carbohydrate intake (p = 0.033) were higher.
Originality/value
In conclusion, further research is required to understand the relationship between chronotype, diet and sleep quality. This study is one of the limited studies that examines sleep quality, daily energy and macronutrient intake and diet quality together for healthy women.
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Sadaf Mollaei, Leia M. Minaker, Jennifer K. Lynes and Goretty M. Dias
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
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