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This paper presents a behavioral economics model with bounded rationality to describe an individual's food consumption choices that lead to weight gain and dieting. Using a physiological relationship determining calories needed to maintain weight, we simulate the food consumption choices of a representative female over a 30-year period. Results show an individual will periodically choose to diet, but that diet will reduce weight only temporarily. Recurrence of weight gain leads to cyclical dieting, which reduces the trend rate of weight increase. Dieting frequency is shown to depend on decision period length, dieting costs, and habit persistence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine gender differences in food habits and food choices, including decisions in healthy eating, to personalize diet therapies to be as effective possible for long-term weight loss.

In this cross-sectional study, eating behaviours were assessed using a questionnaire composed of 12 questions concerning food habits, 17 concerning food taste, and four about healthy eating. There were 2,021 (1,276 women) Caucasian adults enrolled in the study.

Statistically significant differences in women compared to men occurred for the following questionnaire entries reading eating habits: whole grain food (10.0 per cent higher in women; p < 0.001); cereals such as barley (8.3 per cent higher in women, p < 0.001); cooked vegetables (6.6 per cent higher in women, p < 0.001); eggs (5.0 per cent lower in women, p = 0.03); meat (9.3 per cent lower in women, p < 0.001); and processed meat (7.1 per cent lower in women, p < 0.001). Women consume more water, sugar-sweetened beverages and alcoholic drinks than males, and liked salty foods more than sweet foods. Men ate faster, ate more during the night and slept worse than women. Men ate meals out more often and tended to be hungrier later in the day. Women missed more meals and ate more times during the day and were also more likely to eat uncontrollably.

The authors observed strong evidence of profound gender-specific differences between men and women in terms of dietary habits, the taste of food and in the relationship with meals.

The findings suggest a need for the creation of gender-specific programs for promoting a healthy lifestyle.

A need for the creation of gender-related programs for promoting healthy lifestyle has been demonstrated.

Reasons for the different eating behaviours among men and women have been found. Western society’s perception of the ideal body weight is much lower for women than for men. In general, social perceptions influence nutritional behaviour to a great extent. Women’s greater nutritional knowledge and sex-specific taste preferences also account for the differences in eating behaviour.

An anomaly of entrepreneurship literature was that, despite serious efforts required to manage a business, few studies had investigated entrepreneurs' health conditions at the end of their careers. This study investigated whether one's entrepreneurship in a lifetime enhanced their health after a career plateau.

The authors tested the main effect and mediating effects of entrepreneurs' life habits and self-esteem, respectively, using two longitudinal representative examples with 8,984 and 12,686 participants.

Results indicated that entrepreneurship significantly improved individuals' general lifetime health condition. Moreover, life habits (e.g. vigorous activities or sports, light activities, drinking habits and diet habits) and self-esteem significantly mediated the relationship between entrepreneurship and lifetime health. Entrepreneurs tended to have better health due to healthier life habits and higher self-esteem than salaried employees. In this paper, the authors also discussed theoretical and practical implications.

The authors proposed and found that, to counter the harsh requirements of entrepreneurial actions, entrepreneurs need to seek personal physical and psychological resources, and these resources can benefit their health even after decades.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the views of Bulgarian citizens about the relevance of lifestyles in the management of scarce resources through rationing and explore whether they are associated with participants’ characteristics.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 322 Bulgarian respondents. Respondents faced a hypothetical rationing scenario where they have to decide whether information about five harmful health behaviours (smoking, excess alcohol consumption, illegal drug use, overeating/poor diet and engaging in dangerous driving (speeding and/or under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs)) should be relevant in priority setting decisions. Descriptive statistics and logistic regressions were performed.

The majority of respondents disagree with the idea that personal responsibility for illness should count in priority decisions. Notwithstanding, there seems to be a wider consensus in giving lower priorities to patients that engage in dangerous driving (excess of speed and/or under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs), illegal drugs use and excessive alcohol intake. Overeating/poor quality nutrition was the risky behaviour less condemned by respondents followed by smoking. Respondents’ sociodemographic, health and beliefs about rationing criteria had different impact in the penalization of the risk behaviours.

This study is the first attempt to awaken attention to the impact that personal responsibility for health may have on intergenerational access to healthcare.

The importance of nutrition in the aetiology and treatment of disease has long been recognised. However, in general, medical education and practice has not kept abreast of the tremendous advances in nutritional knowledge. Authorities in many countries have commented on the inadequate recognition, support and attention given to the subject of nutrition in medical schools. The need for nutrition education to students and to practising doctors has been repeatedly emphasised in the USA, where steps have been taken to implement suitable programmes. In the United Kingdom scant attention has been directed toward an evaluation of the current situation and little has been achieved in promoting nutrition education within the medical profession.

This study relies on the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985) to examine the antecedents of regular exercise in the audit profession; in addition, the research model tested herein includes two key consequences of exercise: physical healthiness and subjective vitality (one dimension of psychological healthiness). A total of 490 auditors (154 from a large regional CPA firm and 336 from a Big-4 CPA firm) participated in the survey. The results indicate that the antecedents of exercise, as articulated by the theory of planned behavior (attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control), are significantly and positively related to actual exercise behavior. As a consequence of exercising, the auditors indicated improved physical and psychological healthiness. From a theoretical perspective, this is the first study to our knowledge to test both antecedents and consequences of exercise in a single model. Practically, the results suggest that CPA firms should create a culture where engaging in regular exercise is expected, accepted, and encouraged; additionally, firms should ensure that auditors have the opportunity and means to exercise on a regular basis, particularly when they are on the road working at client sites. Rising health care costs are a concern for all employers and employees. A greater understanding of how to improve the physical and psychological healthiness of employees will benefit individuals, organizations, and societies.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the characteristics of social media health information and its adoption. The purpose is to identify information characteristics that can be used to estimate the level of health information adoption in advance.

According to the Information Adoption Model (IAM), the study extracted ten information characteristics from the aspects of information quality and information source credibility. The sample data was collected from the top ten influential health accounts based on the Impact List of Sina Weibo to test the effectiveness of these characteristics in distinguishing information at different levels of adoption. The forecasting of information adoption level is regarded as a binary classification question in the study and support vector machine (SVM) is used to do the research.

The results indicate that ten information characteristics chosen in this study are related to information adoption. Based on these information characteristics, it is feasible to estimate the level of health information adoption, and the estimation accuracy is relatively high.

A lot of work has been done in previous researches to reveal the factors that influence information adoption. The theoretical contribution of this work is to further discuss how to use the influencing factors to do some predictive work for information adoption. In practice, it will help health information publishers to disseminate high-quality health information more effectively as well as promote the adoption of health information.

In this chapter the aim is to analyse the way the relationship between health and food has been changing at the same time as Spanish society itself. From the beginnings of the consumer society until the present day the modernization process has made its imprint on the guidelines public bodies have issued to the public on caring for their health and diet. Beginning in the 1960s with a welfare idea of a healthy diet, very typical of the decade, and meant for a population with nutritional problems, today we have guidelines for an overfed population. The social trends dominant in each historical moment are shown throughout this transformation process and the dietary recommendations have been part of the social change. However, the perceptions of the administration itself on what constitutes a healthy diet have also made their mark on the criteria. The modernizing nature of the paternalistic administration of the 1960s can be easily seen in contrast with the public bodies of the 1980s competing with the messages from the food and agricultural businesses. As the 20th century drew to a close, dietary advice was in keeping with a background dominated by considerations on the nature of social change and in which both public bodies and citizens trusted in the truths of science as a reference point for correct action. At the beginning of the 21st century, reflexivity and questioning of scientific power appear and also an increase in public preoccupation with food risks. Each stage is analysed relating historical background and dietary recommendations.

The purpose of this research is to improve the understanding of drivers and inhibitors of healthy diet behaviors in the context of an emerging economy, such as Mexico, with a severe problem of overweight and obesity. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) and protection motivation theory (PMT) provided the theoretical background for this study.

A qualitative approach was used, given the limited amount of information available on consumers’ motivations to change behavior. In-depth interviews with experts in nutrition and four focus groups with consumers from two segments were performed to collect information. Thematic analysis was used to analyze information.

PMT provided a better explanation of current dietary behavior; the positive attitudes that, according to TPB, are the immediate antecedent of behavior offered a poor explanation for autoreported behaviors. Results indicate that perceived low self-efficacy and high costs prevent change of behavior. Meanwhile, low vulnerability and severity among younger consumers adds to the low intention to adopt a healthier diet. In general, sensorial attributes of products, such as texture, flavor, color, smell and appearance, prevail over nutritional attributes.

The outline of a social marketing program is suggested after the research findings. This program emphasizes prevention and is intended to complement governmental policies designed to modify the environment to facilitate access to healthy food.

Social marketing principles have been developed and applied mainly in the context of developed countries. This work contributes to the extension of such principles to an emerging economy with a public health problem related to overweight. Results of the research provide the basis to mold an appropriate intervention.

The nutritional and anthropometric status can be essential in determining their immune response to vaccines. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the association between diet quality and anthropometric indices with the side effects of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and the SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin G titer among Kurdish adults.

This cross-sectional survey-based study was conducted between December 2021 and February 2022. This paper included data on 115 adults, 20–89 years old, from the Kurdistan region. Dietary information was collected using a short food frequency questionnaire, and diet quality was assessed using a plant-based healthy diet score. A blood test was performed to measure the SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobin G (IgG) titer after the vaccination's first and second doses.

Overweight and obese subjects reported more local pain, myalgia, headache, local bruising and local reactions after receiving the first dose of the vaccine (p = 0.04). People on a less healthy diet reported more local pain, myalgia and headache (p = 0.04) and more local bruising and reactions (p = 0.01) after receiving the second dose of the vaccine. On the other hand, the authors observed that those with healthy dietary habits had more IgG titer after the first and second doses of vaccination than those with less healthy dietary habits (p = 0.001).

The results showed that participants with a healthy diet and normal weight status had fewer side effects of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine than obese people and those with a less healthy diet.