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Eating away from home frequency is increasing and is linked with numerous adverse health outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to inform the development of health promotion materials for improving eating away from home behaviors by elucidating related parent and child cognitions.

Parents (n=37) and children (n=35; ages 6–11 years) participated in focus group discussions, based on social cognitive theory. Data were content analyzed to detect themes.

Many parents were concerned about what children ate away from home, however, others were less concerned because these occasions were infrequent. Lack of time and busy schedules were the most common barriers to eating fewer meals away from home. The greatest barrier to ensuring children ate healthfully away from home was parents were not present to monitor children’s intake. To overcome this, parents supervised what kids packed for lunch, provided caregivers instruction on foods to provide, and taught kids to make healthy choices. Kids understood that frequently eating away from home resulted in less healthful behaviors. Barriers for kids to eat healthy when away from home were tempting foods and eating in places with easy access to less healthy food. Kids reported they could take responsibility by requesting healthy foods and asking parents to help them eat healthfully away from home by providing healthy options and guidance.

This study is one of the first to qualitatively analyze parent and child eating away from home cognitions. It provides insights for tailoring nutrition education interventions to be more responsive to these audiences’ needs.

This study aims to assess Brazilian adult consumers’ behavior, aged 18–70, when purchasing ready-to-eat food during the first months of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Participants answered an online questionnaire about behaviors related to the purchase of ready-to-eat food from food services: changes in usage frequency during the pandemic, reasons for altering purchase habits, types of food and beverages bought before and during the pandemic and the frequency of on-site (consumption in food services) and off-site (delivery, take-away and drive-through) service utilization at lunch and dinner.

Out of 970 individuals who participated in the study, during the pandemic, 38% of participants reduced their food service usage, whereas 18% stopped using it. The main reasons given by participants who reduced and stopped food service usage were cooking at home (52% and 59%, respectively) and feeling afraid of contracting COVID-19 (26% and 22%, respectively). The reduction was more frequent among divorced/widowed/single individuals (p = 0.001) and in total social distancing, that is, all day long (p = 0.03). A significant reduction in on-site consumption frequency occurred for lunch and dinner (p < 0.001), whereas an increase in the off-site consumption frequency service for lunch (p = 0.016) and a reduction for dinner (p = 0.01) occurred compared to pre-COVID-19. However, 48% of participants used these services at least once a week in both periods. Most consumed foods and drinks before and during the pandemic were pasta/pizza (74% and 64%, respectively), snack/burgers (66% and 59%, respectively), soft drinks (41% and 37%, respectively) and alcoholic beverages (37% and 25%, respectively).

Knowledge about food choices away from home during the pandemic is scarce. High consumption of food away from home has been associated with a greater risk of developing chronic non-communicable diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and others. Eating behavior is influenced by the cultural, social, economic and personal characteristics of each individual. Understanding the main changes related to the consumption of ready-to-eat food and what the affected consumers profile in a time of unprecedented crisis, it is important to provide scientific knowledge that allows one to anticipate the implications for the future of individuals’ health and food systems and, consequently, to develop public policy or awareness and promotion actions of public health that encourage adopting healthier and balanced eating habits.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes that have taken place in the family and relate these changes to where and how people eat.

Female heads of household were surveyed via telephone interviews to identify the characteristics of how the modern family dines. The telephone interview was conducted by a commercial research organization and used random digit dialing methods to identify potential respondents. The personal telephone interview was conducted by trained interviewers provided by the research supplier. The respondents were screened to insure that the respondent was a head of household.

Data revealed that families are reacting to time pressures in a way that changes the way they prepare foods while not affecting the end result. Overall, 75 percent of families eat as a family in the home five or more nights per week. In addition, 85 percent of those who eat together four nights a week or fewer, claim they would like to eat at home more often with their families. Today, families are eating together, even if it means making mealtime part of the daily multi‐tasking ritual. The extent to which families actually make a point to eat meals together could be an invaluable and irreplaceable component of healthy family relations. Culture, economy, and society have changed and people have again started ensuring that eating together occurs on a daily basis.

The paper highlights how the changing role of the family can dramatically influence the food industry.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize food consumption outside the home and verify the existence of relationships between income, expenditure and the prevalence of overweight and obesity in adult individuals in Brazil.

Food expenditure data were used as well as those on the prevalence of overweight and obesity available in the reports from Family Budgets Research carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in the years 2002-2003 and 2008-2009. In addition, the authors used the Kruskall-Wallis test to verify whether there were significant differences between the classes of income with respect to the average expenditure on food outside the home.

It was observed that the higher the income of the individual, the greater the expenditure on food outside the home. It was also found that the prevalence of overweight and obesity is higher in individuals who have higher income, particularly among men. Thus, it is suggested that the higher the income of the individual, the larger the expenditure on food outside the home and the greater the prevalence of overweight and obesity.

This study used spending on food away from home (FAFH), but the authors know that is need to use other variables like frequency of FAFH and quantities but this data were not available.

The study points to the importance of restaurants in the prevention of obesity, since they can offer in their menus foods with fewer calories, and they can also increase the variety and availability of fruits and vegetables.

The study discusses the public health problem, obesity, at the same time as it presents the importance of agribusiness in providing a balanced diet for individuals.

This paper aims to identify Australian consumer segments based on sustainable lifestyles and attitudes towards food waste and model the factors (socio-demographic, attitudinal and lifestyle) contributing to different levels of food waste.

This study uses a face-to-face survey of 334 respondents. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to identify consumer segments, and econometric analysis is used to model the factors contributing to different levels of food waste.

A total of six lifestyle segments are identified: the freshness lovers, the vegetarian and organic food lovers, the recycle/reuse advocates, the waste-conscious consumers, the label-conscious/sensory consumer and the food waste defenders. This research distinguishes between low and medium levels of food waste based on marginal effects analysis. At low levels of food waste, consumers who worry about the food waste cost, making efforts to reduce food waste are less likely to waste food. Affluent consumers, who claim to be waste conscious, have young children and frequently eat outside, are more likely to waste food than others, lying in the medium waste group.

Australia, like many other countries, has high levels of food waste and despite policy efforts, curbing household food waste remains a challenge. In addition, there are limited food waste studies that focus on consumers who practice sustainable lifestyles. The current paper contributes to the market segmentation literature and has several implications for food policy and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the nutritional quality of dinnertime meals eaten out of home (OH) vs those eaten at home by male Korean workers.

The study included 1,634 male Korean workers aged between 19 and 64 years among 15,508 individuals who participated in a 24-hour dietary recall through the Sixth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2013 to 2014. The study participants were classified and analyzed according to the place where dinner had been prepared: out-of-home group (OHG) (n=659) and at-home group (AHG) (n=975).

Young male white-collar workers who are unmarried with a higher level of education and income were more likely to eat OH at dinner. The OHG consumed more energy, fat, and sodium, but less carbohydrate at dinner than the AHG. The contribution of dinner to daily energy and macronutrient intakes, except for carbohydrate, was higher in the OHG. Additionally, the study results suggested that the OHG was less likely to consume a traditional Korean meal at dinner. Overall, the nutritional quality of dinnertime meals eaten OH had greater potential to lead to negative effects on nutrition and health.

This study highlights OH eating among male Korean workers as an important arena in which strategies for healthier eating can be deployed when establishing worksite health promotion or related national nutrition policies.

“The nation’s diet” is a six‐year basic social science programme funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, consisting of 16 projects located in universities across England, Scotland and Wales. Explains the overall purpose of this multi‐disciplinary programme in social scientific terms as the examination of the processes affecting human food choice. The programme’s central concern ‐ “why do people eat what they do?” ‐ is amenable to study using a variety of social scientific research approaches, designs and techniques of data collection and analysis. Illustrates this methodological variety selectively in reporting a few of the programme’s early results from three of its projects. The findings confirm that people eat what they do for a multiplicity of reasons in addition to, and sometimes in conflict with, hunger, properties of the food itself or people’s own valuation of health and nutrition.

Explores how eating‐out patterns have changed over the last 50 years. From a food‐rationed wartime Britain through to the 1960s with the advent of the Chinese restaurant invasion, closely followed by the mushrooming Indian and Italian restaurants, highlights present‐day dining‐out habits and the demand by customers for quality and variety.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of the construct validity by the known-groups method of a Brazilian cooking skills and healthy-eating questionnaire.

Responses obtained from university students (n=767) for Brazilian-Portuguese cooking skills and health eating questionnaire, surveyed online, were submitted to construct validity comparing two known groups. The t-test was used to compare differences between gender (male and female) and the level of cooking knowledge (high or low) in each measure of the questionnaire. Internal consistency was evaluated by obtaining the Cronbach’s coefficient.

Women showed significantly higher means than men in all scale measures, except in the self-efficacy for using basic cooking techniques (SECT), where no differences were found. Students classified as having high cooking knowledge and had higher score means in all scales compared to the students with low levels. Internal consistency was adequate for all scales (a>0.70), except for cooking attitude (CA) (a=0.33) and cooking behavior (CB) scales (a=0.59).

SECT likely depends on cooking knowledge, independent of gender, suggesting further examination. Items and structure of CA and CB constructs also need to be examined more deeply.

A validated cooking skills and health-eating questionnaire demonstrated its ability to detect differences between groups, useful to provide data for further interventions.

No available cooking skills questionnaires were found that have been validated by the known-groups method regarding differences between gender and individuals’ level of cooking knowledge, as conducted in this study.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the preference of health-warning message labeling in an eating-away-from-home context. The authors assessed individuals’ preference valuation of such messaging from a dual – consumer and citizen – perspective and with associated expected risk reduction (RR) level.

In an online stated choice experiment on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 658), participants were asked to provide willingness to pay (WTP) preferences for health-warning messages and based on the expected RR from health-warning messages. Two types of multiple price list questions were used for consumer and citizen contexts. Interval regression and descriptive analysis methods were applied to analyze the data.

The study found that individuals placed a higher value (higher WTP) on health-warning message labeling when acting as citizens rather than as consumers. An RR expectation of 50 per cent was most effective in increasing participants’ WTP. Individuals who ate out frequently were more concerned about healthier food messages, and the influence of gender and age on WTP was conditional on individuals’ roles as consumers versus citizens.

This study extends the theory of consumer-citizen duality to the context of health-related information labeling, thus opening the discussion to extending such labeling from traditionally risky behavior such as alcohol and tobacco to also including food choice behavior. The authors also highlight implications on policy and industry practices to promote healthy food choices through such messages.