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This study aims to examine consumers’ preferences among four calorie-reducing approaches – resizing, reformulation, substitution and elimination – and to understand what motivates consumers to order low-calorie food using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a model.

A conceptual model was developed based on the TPB with an additional construct of food choice motives. A total of 467 responses were collected. Descriptive statistics, multiple regression and ANOVA were used in the data analysis.

Consumers have a clear preference for substitution and elimination. The pattern that ingredients with higher calories were modified at a higher priority indicated that consumers might improve food decisions based on calorie information.

Restaurants should allow substitution or elimination of certain ingredients from menu items. Including more low-calorie sides will cost restaurants less than changing the main dish. A menu item on an entrée form is more amenable to modification for decreased calorie content as consumers have high taste expectations for popular traditional foods (e.g. burgers and pizza).

This is the first study to investigate consumers’ preferences among the four popular calorie-reducing approaches. A novel “Build Your Own Meal” approach was used in the questionnaire to allow the participants to choose from more than 150 ingredients, which compensated for personal preferences, thus mitigating possible limitations associated with studies of this kind, and was a good indicator of the participants’ actual ordering behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to assess eight weeks individualized balanced low-calorie diet on anthropometric measurements and body composition in apparently healthy obese women.

Forty apparently healthy obese women (body mass index: 27.5-40 kg/m² and age: 18-40 years) were recruited from the nutrition clinic in the north-west of Iran, Ardabil city. Anthropometric measurements and body composition analysis were done at baseline and after the intervention.

During eight weeks, individualized balanced low-calorie diet resulted in a significant decrease in body weight (−4.0 ± 0.3 kg, p < 0.001), body mass index (−1.6 ± 0.1 kg/m², p < 0.001), waist circumference (−2.9 ± 0.3 cm, p < 0.001), waist-to-hip ratio (−0.01 ± 0.004, p = 0.001), waist-to-height ratio (−0.02 ± 0.002, p < 0.001), per cent body fat (−1.1 ± 0.2 per cent, p < 0.001), fat mass (−2.5 ± 0.3 kg, p < 0.001), visceral fat level (−0.8 ± 0.1, p < 0.001), visceral fat area (−11.3 ± 2.3 cm², p < 0.001), trunk mass fat (−1.2 ± 0.1 kg, p < 0.001), left arm mass fat (−0.2 ± 0.03 kg, p < 0.001), right arm mass fat (−0.2 ± 0.03 kg, p < 0.001), left leg mass fat (−0.4 ± 0.1 kg, p < 0.001), right leg mass fat (−0.4 ± 0.05 kg, p < 0.001), abdominal volume index (−1.1 ± 0.1 m², p < 0.001), conicity index (−0.007 ± 0.002 m^2/3/kg^1/2, p = 0.001) and body adiposity index (1.0 ± 0.1 per cent, p < 0.001).

The limitation concerns the generalizability to the general population of obese women. Future studies should take sex differences into consideration. These studies may focus on the long-term benefits.

Balanced low-calorie diet-induced moderate weight loss alone may represent an effective strategy for reducing metabolic risk factors among obese women.

Personalized price promotion (PPP) is a marketing instrument that addresses the limitations of untargeted promotions by tailoring the offers to individual customers based on their purchase histories. Current evidence on PPP is limited to its immediate effects on buying behaviors at grocery stores and food companies' economic benefits. Moreover, little is known about the role of consumer characteristics in determining how effectively this promotional tool works. Hence, we aim to assess the effectiveness of PPP in promoting healthy fast food and which consumer-specific factors affect its performance.

The authors conduct a laboratory experiment to examine the effects of personalized and non-personalized coupons for lower-calorie fast food menus on food and calorie selection. The coupon personalization is based on participants' menu choices, calorie needs and deal proneness. The authors additionally investigate how post-intervention changes are influenced by consumers' estimation of their selected calories, and their attitudes toward nutrition.

Recipients of personalized incentives are more likely than participants in the control group to redeem the offered coupons, select more healthy items and reduce their selected calories. Such changes are less likely among participants underestimating the calorie content of their menu choices and perceiving higher barriers to healthy eating. Personalized coupons perform better even among subjects receiving lower discounting levels than the control treatment.

As the first to evaluate the effectiveness of PPP in encouraging healthy food choices, this study highlights the potential of this cutting-edge price intervention and provides valuable implications for future research.

For some time there has been concern among dietitians, the medical profession, teachers, parents and others about the use of proprietary diets which severely restrict the energy intake in order to achieve weight losses that had previously been thought impossible. Now the Department of Health and Social Security has published a report of a working party which reviewed the evidence about their use. Fiona Hunter BSc, SRD, summarises this report and its recommendations

This study aims to question the conventional wisdom that brands compete for customers, especially in mature industries such as soft drinks. Rather than engaging in price wars or promotion wars, brands coexist in the markets by focusing on their own brand loyal customers.

Consumer panel data of carbonated beverages are examined using Markov chains to measure switching between two brands: Coke and Pepsi. Switching rates are conducted for all Coke households (n = 10,474) and Pepsi households (n = 7,227). This is further examined with respect to heavy half (upper median) consumers of each brand who make up approximately 86 per cent of volume purchases.

Households that made a majority of their purchase volume in either Coke or Pepsi products stayed with their preferred brands in subsequent quarters: 85 to 97 per cent of households. These findings are validated at all levels of the brand architecture (family brands, product brands and modified brands), even though both brands engage in similar marketing mix tactics (advertising, price cuts, distribution, product offerings). Loyalty was even higher among the heavy user households.

The research was conducted using two well-known brands in a mature industry. Services or non-mature markets may exhibit different loyalty patterns.

The study extends prior research on competition, loyalty and branded offerings to show that brand loyalty remains high despite marketing efforts to switch the brand buying behavior.

Very low calorie diets, or more precisely, commercially prepared diets, which provide less than 600Kcals a day, are estimated to have been used by 7 million people throughout the world. In the UK alone approximately half a million people are thought to have tried such a diet. However despite a recent government report, on the use of VLCDs in obesity, which concludes that there is no real evidence to suggest that VLCDs cause any serious damage to health or life, the use of them remains controversial.

Summarizes the recent changes that have taken place in both the individual intense and bulk sweeteners markets and considers their likely influence on the pattern of intake observed in the 1987/88 diary record surveys carried out by MAFF. The intense sweetener market continues to develop steadily, largely driven by the diet, low‐calorie and reduced calorie soft drinks market. The bulk sweeteners market has not been subject to the same rapid development experienced for intense sweeteners, but the signs are there that the market for this class of sweetener is starting to develop and a variety of new applications are beginning to emerge. Provides a brief overview for each of the currently approved individual intense and bulk sweeteners and describes their contribution to the UK sweeteners market. Discusses the implications of the EC Sweeteners Directive, which has recently been adopted by member states and will be implemented in the UK within the next year or so, in relation to acceptable levels of sweetener intake.

Nutritional disorders and unhealthy nutrition, which are recognised as the causes of many widespread health problems (overweight, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, etc.) have emerged as a significant problem that requires resolution. The purpose of this study is to influence dietary preferences and to reduce current health issues by using gamification as a social marketing tool. To this end, the decision-making processes affecting food choices in individuals based on calorific content were evaluated and the effectiveness of gamification in encouraging consumers to make lower-calorie choices was examined.

An experimental design was used to determine the effect of gamification on the dietary preferences of consumers. An independent factorial design (between groups) in which multiple variables were tested with different subjects was used to test the factors that were thought to affect the food choices made by the participants from gamified and non-gamified menus.

In Study 1, menus (gamified vs non-gamified) and nutritional consciousness (low vs high) had a significant main effect on the total calorie count of the selected foods. In Study 2, menus (gamified with prices vs non-gamified with prices) had a significant main effect on the total calorie count of the selected foods, while nutritional consciousness (low vs high) did not. A significant interaction was observed between menus and nutritional consciousness.

Gamification can be used as an important publicity tool for promoting public health using different influential factors such as price.

This study shows that people can change their food preferences positively through gamification. It shows further how people tend to evaluate the price of their food rather than the calorie count when making dietary preferences. Gamification can, therefore, be considered a promising social marketing tool for improving public health.

This study puts forth a consumer-oriented concept of clean labels and attempts to empirically investigate consumer perceptions of these labels.

A self-administered survey (n = 346) was used as the research instrument for data collection in the current study.

Results from an online survey indicate that consumers perceived less processed, elimination of undesired ingredients and ethical concerns as salient attributes associated with clean labels. Consumer-perceived benefits of these attributes include healthiness, social responsibility, sensory appeal, reliable product and low calorie. Additionally, canonical correlation analysis yields two significant associations between clean label attributes and the corresponding benefits. Attributes of elimination of undesired ingredients and utilization of familiar elements drive the benefits of healthiness, low calorie and social responsibility. Attributes of being less processed and with simple ingredients are associated with the benefit of sensory appeal.

This study systematically investigates the discrete clean halo effect by empirically examining the associations between the clean label attributes and the dimensionalities of benefits as perceived by consumers.

One of the major technological changes in food products over the last decade has been the development of “lite” food and drinks. These products have become regular items of purchase and acceptance in UK diet. The principal areas of growth in the “lite” market have been in sugar‐free drinks and low fat foods. Whilst market growth has been stimulated by increased consumer awareness of diet and nutrition, consumers are being influenced by the image message associated with such products rather than a strict health message. Harmonisation of European food law after 1992, especially in respect of sweeteners, offers potential opportunities for further growth in “lite” markets. Fat replacers are likely to provide an area of future interest as long as concerns about the mass marketing of synthetic foods do not dampen the market.