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Improving the nutritious quality of diets for individuals and populations is a central goal of many public health advocates and intergovernmental organizations. Yet the outcome of healthy eating has been shown to systematically vary across individual-level socioeconomic lines, and across countries in different locations of the food system. We therefore assess variation in the association between eating nutritionally dense fresh fruits and vegetables and both self-rated health (SRH) and body mass index (BMI) across individual income and country locations in the food system.

We use nationally representative survey data from 31 countries drawn from the International Social Survey Programme’s 2011 Health module. We estimate the effect of the frequency of eating fresh fruits and vegetables using random-intercept, random-coefficient multilevel mixed-effects regression models.

We confirm that eating nutritionally dense fresh fruits and vegetables frequently associates with more positive health outcomes. However, this general conclusion masks substantial individual- and country-level heterogeneity. For both SRH and BMI, the largest beneficial associations are concentrated among the most affluent individuals in the most affluent countries. Moving away from either reduces the positive association of healthy eating.

Our results provide an important wrinkle for policies aimed at changing the nutritional quality of diets. Adjustments to diets without taking into account fundamental causes of socioeconomic status will likely be met with attenuated results.

We compare two important health outcomes across a wide variety of types of countries. We demonstrate that our main conclusions are only detectable when employing a flexible multilevel methodological design.

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 purpose of this study is to explore rural children’s own perspectives on health, well-being, and nutrition to better understand how they approach, navigate, and make sense of these topics.

This study uses a qualitative ethnographic research design theoretically informed by the “new” Sociology of Childhood and methodologically informed by constructivist grounded theory. This ongoing study with fifth-grade students in an elementary school in a small rural school district in central Illinois consists of ethnographic observations conducted at the school, in-depth interviews with students, and participatory tools that seek to involve students more fully in the process of data collection.

Preliminary findings of this pilot study suggest that many aspects often discussed in the context of childhood obesity, especially in rural settings, including knowledge or education about healthy eating, increasing physical activity levels, or access to healthy foods, are complex and multifaceted and do not easily lend themselves to standard interventions. Findings also indicate that children’s ideas about healthy eating deviate from their own eating practices.

Conceptualized as a grounded theory study, the research is not intended to be generalizable or reproducible. Instead, the study seeks to develop hypotheses directly from the field and study participants’ views and voices. These perspectives will inform a more in-depth study of childhood obesity in rural settings planned for 2019.

Findings from this pilot study will inform innovative, informed interventions that are guided by children’s own experiences and perspectives. Study findings will also be of benefit to practicing pediatricians and other child health professionals as they understand how to better think about and address challenges of health and weight management of patients and their families.

Escalation in the number of online food ordering platforms, along with extensive junk food marketing, lucrative offers and discounts, innovation in food flavors, and doorstep delivery of food, have triggered the consumption of high-calorie and unhealthy food products which pose serious threats to the health and future well-being of individuals by making them more obese. To date, several public policy frameworks have been developed to confront obesity; however, their efficacy seems debatable. Directionally, the objective of this study is to highlight the potential influence of “digital nudging” which aims at steering individuals in desired directions, at the same time delimiting their freedom of choice. The study also establishes the effectiveness of digital nudges promoting a healthy lifestyle by steering individuals toward healthier food choices. The author strongly believes that this conceptual perusal will offer immense inputs to healthy food marketers and researchers alike in addressing the matters of obesity. Addressing the menace of obesity calls for joint efforts of the government, the public, researchers, and more specifically food product manufacturers/marketers who should incorporate healthier food options into their portfolios. E-tailers are also urged to adopt such practices in virtual markets and promote healthier food options to effectively tackle obesity.

This chapter focuses on the healthy lifestyle desideratum stretching out of the public policy realm to become a business interest in established and emerging economies. It is argued that retailers, through their marketing and social responsibility strategies, evolve into promoters of a healthy lifestyle at both social and individual levels. The selected examples from Poland illustrate how food retailers, particularly fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailers, respond to the healthy lifestyle desideratum within an emerging economy.

A qualitative approach is taken. The role and potential activities of retailers to promote a healthy lifestyle are identified by theoretical studies. Then, retailers’ involvement in developing the ‘health and wellness’ market segment as a market opportunity is justified by analyses of competitive trends in Polish retailing. The marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of leading Polish retailers (representatives of different organisational forms) contributing to the development of a healthy lifestyle are presented. Data are drawn from companies’ web pages, interviews, magazines and research agencies.

Recent experience in Poland confirms the finding from previous research that the retail sector in emerging economies is rapidly progressing towards catching up with well-established practices in developed countries. On the demand side, this process is fostered by the rise of middle-class consumers, while on the supply side, the key driver is the fierce competition among international chains and domestic distributors.

Examples drawn from Polish retailing represent good business practices, the relevance of which stretches beyond their local context and renders these business practices shareable.

Awareness is raised of the importance of progressing towards a healthy lifestyle; pragmatic advice is provided on how retailers from an emerging economy can enable changes in consumers’ behaviour.

The business focus on healthy lifestyle development fills a knowledge gap since health science perspectives still prevail in mainstream research on the topic.

The chapter is an auto-ethnographic account of the self-management of a chronic illness within the context of a participatory research project on Mediterranean Diet (MD). A group of Italian women with type 2 diabetes is following a non-medical, personal interpretation of the Mediterranean-style diet. The research account is preceded by a critical appraisal of the scientific narratives of the MD.

Analysis of epidemiological research on MD examines some methodological aspects of gender blindness in its scientific approach. The ethnography concerns self-management of MD diet and redefinition of gender relations.

MD is analyzed as a case of transplantation of yesterday’s cultural and social capitals of the peasant classes, to today’s discourses on food considered as appropriate for affluent people suffering from satiety diseases. The ethnography highlights gender aspects of biographical work, examining in particular a “conversion” dietary model.

The ethnography must be amplified to include women and men from different social classes with various Mediterranean cooking habits, and family and gender patterns.

The chapter highlights cultural processes for women’s empowerment in self-managing type 2 diabetes.

This chapter may represent a seminal sociological work on chronic illness, gender and food studies in one of the “native” contexts of the Mediterranean-style diet.

In Canada, food insecurity is characterized by the consumption of low quantity or low-quality foods, worrying about food supply and/or acquiring foods in socially unacceptable ways, such as begging or scavenging. As of 2012, approximately 15.2% of Ontario, Canada, children are living in food insecure households, a prevalence which has remained steady since 2005. This is particularly concerning when considering that school-aged children are a population whose growth and developing is sensitive to nutritional stress, and the experience of childhood food insecurity is highly associated with the development of adverse physical, mental and learning outcomes. This study aims at establishing the relationship between food insecurity and Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) standardized test scores in order to highlight the incompatibility of the EQAO's reliance on test outcomes in determining Ontarian school's accountability, specifically for those with a high prevalence of food insecurity.

In the last few decades, the obesity rate has increased along with the increasing of away-from-home food consumption at restaurants (Wei & Miao, 2013), especially the food consumption at quick-service restaurants (QSRs). Previous research stated that the main factors that influence the customers’ food selection are found. Price and quality of food are the most significant things that mostly concerned customers when they are in decision-making process. There is a controversial argument between several studies that identified calorie labelling on menu influences consumers on food choice, while others said vice versa. However, several studies argued that calorie information does not have as much impact on customers’ food purchasing as other factors such as food’s quality, ranges of food, price of food, restaurant’s atmosphere, and speed of food service (Carey & Genevive, 1995). The aim of this chapter is to examine the importance of representing calorie information on menu and its effects on customer decision-making especially at QSRs. Therefore, the following questions have been addressed in this chapter:

What are the factors that influence consumer choice at QSRs?

Does calorie labelling on menus impact customer purchasing at QSRs?

This chapter starts with the introduction of the topic and reviewing previous research on menu labelling and calorie information at QSRs. This chapter aims to provide a better understanding of customer decision-making when ordering a food with regard to calorie information on the menu and the customer preference.

Like many other countries, a reform of school meals policies has been implemented in Portugal, wherein nutritional and health criteria are considered in the design of the public plate. Given that a large literature on school meals focus on cities seen as sites for promising transformation regarding health, resilience and sustainability, it is pertinent to examine how these policies are being received in rural areas. Similar to other vulnerable regions in southern Europe, rural areas in Portugal have been affected by depopulation, the re-localisation of public services (e.g. schools, health centres and courts of justice) to larger conurbations, a drastic reduction of farming areas and its reconversion from sites of production to sites of consumption that thrive on tourism. While research on children’s attitudes, experiences and practices in rural areas had picked up the attention of social scientists, research on children’s relations and engagements with school meals in these areas does not abound. This chapter addresses three issues: first, how the catering staff and health professionals experience children’s engagements with school meals after the policy reform; second, how the discourses of the school staff and parents around the rural and gastro-idylls contrast with the reported food practices and experiences of everyday life, and third, how the multiple engagements of children with animals, plants and other nature conflict with or are juxtaposed to the images of the rural idyll. Drawing from focus groups material with children aged between 7 and 9 years old living in the rural hinterland of an inland medium-size city in Portugal, focus groups with parents and interviews with stakeholders (e.g. school and kitchen staff, local authorities, nutritionists and catering firms) the chapter aims at contributing to a broader understanding of children lived experiences with food consumption in rural contexts.

School and community gardens have long histories grounded in social justice. Currently there are advocacy movements calling for gardening programs that foster academics and equity movements through nutrition education, neighborhood green spaces and beautification, and ecological sustainability. While the authors contributed personal experiences and useful resources for those interested in school and community gardening, the authors primarily investigated multiple theories that embraced critical and ecological pedagogies in neighborhoods, schools, urban communities. The democratic movements of food security, removal of food deserts, and socioeconomic sustainability using applicable gardening programs were the driving forces behind this chapter.