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The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer thinking about nutrition decisions and how firms can use consumers’ awareness of the links between nutrients and health generated by public health messages to market products, including ones, which have little nutritional value. We approach this issue by tracking the development of public health messages based on scientific research, dissemination of those messages in the popular press, and use of nutrition claims in food advertisements to assess whether firms are timing the use of nutrition claims to take advantage of heuristic-based decision-making. Our findings suggest that the timing of the development of nutrition information, its dissemination in the press, and use in advertising accords well with a heuristic processing model in which firms take advantage of associations between nutrient information and health in their advertisements. However, the demonstrated relationships may not be causal. Further research will be needed to provide stronger and more comprehensive evidence regarding the proposed message hijacking process. If the message hijacking framework is borne out: (1) simple overall health rating scales could significantly improve consumer decision-making, (2) the impact of misleading advertisements could be mitigated by encouraging a multidimensional view of nutrition, and (3) more intensive regulation of product labeling could limit the impact of hijacked messages.

Overall, this paper considers a novel hypothesis about the impact of public health messages on nutrition and health.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This chapter explores the development of advertising regulations governing food advertising to children in Australia since the 1940s. By introducing the advertising and marketing self-regulatory system, the Australian Government is taking a neoliberal approach, advocating for the free market to initiate and sustain the country’s economic development, instead of greater government regulation. By examining the primary and secondary literature, such as government reports and research, and newspaper and academic articles, this chapter outlines different regulatory initiatives adopted by both the government and food industry to limit food and beverage advertising to children on television and online, in order to prevent obesity rates increasing in children. This chapter synthesizes and critically evaluates food industry and public health studies, government and non-government reviews, and other research studies to evaluate the influence of self-regulation on Australian television food advertising within the neoliberal context since the 1990s. It contributes to the literature on food advertising regulations for children in Australia by offering evidence of how the government, public health authorities and the food industry have attempted to keep pace with changes in the advertising, marketing and media industries by developing and reviewing advertising codes. It identifies the loopholes that exist in these self-regulatory codes and concludes that Australia’s current advertising regulatory arrangements are failing to protect our children from unhealthy food marketing on television, especially on relatively under-regulated online platforms such as social media and branded websites. The issues identified in this chapter could aid the food and beverage industry, as well as the self-regulatory system, to offer comprehensive and applicable solutions to combat Australia’s obesity crises by implementing new legislations that align with different marketing practices.

Diet therapy or nutritional therapy has become a real challenge in the fight against the increasing number of modern illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. The scientific community has recognized the importance of studies that will support or rebut the association of certain nutrition/energy inputs with the prevention and/or improvement of certain diseases. Patient counseling is offered by medical doctors, nutritionists and dieticians, but patients often seek additional sources of information from popular media that may not be adequately scientifically supported. Whose responsibility is it when the Diet Therapy is not an effective treatment and where does the consequent ethical and moral responsibility lie?

This chapter argues for the importance of a nutritionally educated scientist evaluating the diets that are seen to be related with the health improvement also excluding diets that are mostly related to the patients’ well-being as the Mediterranean, DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), Ketogenic and Vegetarian diet. Diet guidelines are often explained with linguistic variables (as “reduce the input of” etc.) which can be differently perceived by the end user. The interpretation if a linguistic variable is presented using the body mass index categories using a bell-shaped curve. The preferable area fits to the linguistic variable “acceptable BMI.” But also are indicated those areas which are less preferable. Those examples of information interpretations show the necessity of knowledge transfer. The quantity of information presented in diet guidelines can be experienced as a great muddle for patients; leaving them not knowing where and how to start. So, remains the ethical and moral responsibility of all links in the chain of nutritional and diet research and recommendations. Only objective and open-minded recommendations based on the latest scientific facts can gain confidence of the social, economical, and political subjects which must put the well-being of the population uppermost in their mind.

We examine the role of communication in stimulating consumer attitudes and buying behavior regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR).

We review the literature on communicating CSR to consumers through (1) messages constructed and verified by the company (such as product claims and corporate advertising), (2) messages constructed by the company, but verified by a third party (such as disclosures), and (3) messages constructed and verified by a third party (such as independent consumer guides and publicity).

Communication messages constructed and verified by the company can be quite effective in persuading consumers, if they are communicated in a credible way. The latter can, for example, be done by including specific behaviors and/or outcomes in the message. Messages constructed by the firm, but verified by a third party tend to have a higher credibility, but risk containing either too little information or too much. Finally, messages constructed and verified by a third party can be seen as highly credible, but can sometimes be seen as merely PR. In addition, both messages focusing on deontological responsibility (the firm’s motives and behavior), and messages focusing on consequentialist responsibility (the outcomes of the firm’s behavior) seem important to consumers.

The results offer suggestions on how to communicate about CSR to consumers.

The chapter provides the first comprehensive overview of the literature on communication about CSR to consumers.

Today's restaurant customer is tempted with an unprecedented array of culinary delights coming from all around the planet. Consumers have been increasingly concerned about personal well-being and are better equipped to gain knowledge about health and nutrition through abundant information in print and other media such as the Internet. This study strives to discover what German restaurant goers really consider to be healthy. Due to the paucity of literature on healthy meals, this research attempts to initiate exploratory investigations testing a new psychological construct of healthy meals by using college students as the study population. This study finds that low-fat and non-genetically modified ingredients are the main concerns when respondents select a healthy meal. In addition, gender and eating habits affect the perceptions of healthy meals. Lastly, drawing from the key findings, suggestions for future research are proposed.

I investigate the well-known educational gradient in smoking. It is well established that, at least in recent decades, people with higher levels of education are less likely to smoke and, conditional on being a smoker, are more likely to quit than are people with less education. Using longitudinal data on lifetime smoking histories, I explore whether the educational gradient changes when one accounts for differences in the amount of information smokers have about the health risks associated with smoking. At the core of the analysis is a new way to measure not only the flow of information a person receives but also a person’s stock of information in any year. I construct measures of the stock and flow of information with consumer magazine articles that discuss cigarette smoking and health. To calculate exposure, I predict individuals’ reading of particular magazines and link predicted exposure to data on individual smoking status in every year of life. The analysis sample includes many individuals who started smoking in the 1930s and 1940s – well before scientific evidence had accumulated. After replicating the education gradient in terms of smoking cessation, I show that it is mostly explained by the interaction between educational attainment and the stock of knowledge individuals possess. The findings suggest that education affects whether and how a stock of health risk information induces people to quit smoking.

Field theory is waxing in the sociology of science, and Pierre Bourdieu’s work is especially influential. His characterization of field structure and dynamics has been especially valuable in drawing attention to hierarchical and center-periphery relations in science and technology, and to the stability and reproduction of science and technology practices. What field theory does less well, however, is to capture the existence of multiple (including marginal) logics around a given sociotechnical object. Nor does it capture the dynamics of a specific logic of neoliberal capitalism in the US: the cultural and economic value of entrepreneurship that emphasizes the continual reconfiguration of social relations, which has its roots in a longer US history of progress-through-reinvention, and is abetted by new technologies designed to continually “update” and remix. Much better at capturing these qualities, we argue, is an institutionalist theory in which dynamism, not stasis, is foregrounded, and there is room for multiple, contradictory, and non-cognitive logics to co-exist. Using the expansion of “alternative nutrition” in the US, we show that its formation took place via the conjunction of parallel streams of social action that encompassed diverse logics and encouraged creativity and hybridity. More generally, variability in field stability and qualities, not static fields, deserve analytic attention.