Parent Resource Packet - A Guide for New Parents

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'Language is the source of misunderstandings'–impact of terminology on public perceptions of health promotion messages

Background: The high level of premature death due to non-communicable diseases has been associated with unhealthful lifestyles, including poor diet. The effectiveness of public health strategies designed to promote health via messages focusing on food and diets depends largely on the perception of the messages by the public. The aim of this study was to explore public perceptions of language commonly used to communicate concepts linking health, food and the diet.<p></p> Methods: This study is a qualitative and semi-quantitative cross-sectional survey exploring public perceptions of terms used to improve eating habits within public health strategies. We recruited adults with no background in nutrition or health-care, from May to July 2013, from urban areas of varying deprivation (n = 12) in Glasgow and Edinburgh, UK. Four key prompt-terms used to convey the idea of improving health through diet were selected for testing: Healthy Eating, Eating for Health, Balanced Diet and Nutritional Balance. Consumer understanding of these terms was explored using mixed-methods, including qualitative focus groups (n = 17) and an interviewer-led word-association exercise (n = 270).<p></p> Results: The word-association exercise produced 1,386 individual responses from the four prompt-terms, with 130 unique responses associated with a single term. Cluster analysis revealed 16 key themes, with responses affected by prompt-term used, age, gender and socio-economic status. Healthy Eating was associated with foods considered ‘healthy’ (p <0.05); Eating for Health and Balanced Diet with negative connotations of foods to avoid (both p <0.001) and Nutritional Balance with the benefits of eating healthily (p <0.01). Focus groups revealed clear differences in perceptions: Eating for Health = positive action one takes to manage existing medical conditions, Healthy Eating = passive aspirational term associated with weight management, Balanced Diet = old fashioned, also dieting for weight loss, Nutritional Balance = maximising physical performance. Food suppliers use Healthy Eating terminology to promote weight management products. Focus group participants welcomed product reformulation to enhance food health properties as a strategy to overcome desensitisation to health-messages.<p></p> Conclusions: Public perceptions of messages communicating concepts linking health, food and the diet are influenced by terminology, resulting in confusion. To increase individual commitment to change eating habits in the long term, public health campaigns need strengthening, potentially by investing in tailored approaches to meet the needs of defined groups of consumers

Cloned Meat, Voluntary Food Labeling, and Organic Oreos

[Excerpt] “In December 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it had reviewed all the available evidence and was poised to approve meat and milk from cloned animals and their progeny. I remember telling one of my colleagues, a patent law professor, who should be as comfortable with technology as anyone, about this development, and his response was, “Yuck. I’m not eating it!” To which of course I replied, “Humph. You won’t know the difference.” Meat or milk from a clone or its descendant is virtually identical to meat or milk from a non-clone, said the FDA, as it also announced that it would almost certainly not require food from clones to be labeled. Consumers often want information about where their food came from or about the processes employed in producing it. The food identity approach to labeling cannot take process into account unless the process affects the identity of the food. When the process does not change the food in any material way, process information on a label might suggest a difference that does not exist. The instinctive “yuck” to the thought of cloned meat highlights the tension between consumer preferences, the government’s science-based, food identity approach, and producers’ efforts to differentiate their products. Part I of this article identifies three functions that labels perform, outlines the types of information usually required, and introduces the rule that voluntary label information cannot be misleading. Part II focuses on process information and its implications. I argue that there is no truly voluntary labeling when consumers care about a feature; if some products are labeled, then unlabeled products bear a de facto label by implication. Partly because of the de facto mandatory labeling principle, process labeling has the potential to mislead consumers. In Part III, I examine some relevant characteristics of consumers. I argue that not all consumers can be misled by label information. Consumers who have no preferences or who are very knowledgeable about the labeled feature are not misled by process labeling. Finally, using labeling of genetically modified (GM) ingredients as an example, I suggest that mandatory labeling of some process information could enhance consumer sovereignty and welfare.

Giving Voice to the Voiceless

The purpose of this study is to understand the experiences of matriculated, full time college students from a medium-sized Catholic, Liberal Arts College in the Northeast who identify as multi-racial or multi-ethnic, specifically identifying as coming from a white and non-white mixed background. In the ever-changing political climate in the United States, those who identify as mixed white and non-white backgrounds feel conflicted in how they ethnically or racially identify. Emerging adulthood (ages 18-25), and college experiences, are important years for identity development. This study tells the untold narratives of mixed non-white and white multi-racial, multi-ethnic individuals

Context-induced creativity and the figurative use of taste terms

For reasons of space, we only discussed one text in which the metaphors used seem to take their root in the context in which it has been written. One text is definitely not enough to make any definite claims on how widespread this phenomenon is. Given what we know about the two domains - Food and taste - one has reasons to believe that when speakers/conceptualisers (e.g. journalists) describe something which stands in some relation to both, they may intuitively be reaching for taste metaphors of the kind described above on the premise that this kind of ‘ornamentation’ will add some spice to what the addressee might otherwise consider a trivial (and boring) topic. At the same time, taste is only one among many properties a particular item of food or a substance (e.g. sugar) has. In consequence, one may well imagine contexts in which it is not its taste, but other properties (e.g. what Harbottle [1997:183] refers to as its 'pure white and deadly’ image) that will make the conceptualiser reach for a particular linguistic or conceptual metaphor

It Depends on What the Meaning of False is: Falsity and Misleadingness in Commercial Speech Doctrine

While scholarship regarding the Supreme Court\u27s noncommercial speech doctrine has often focused on the level of protection for truthful, non-misleading commercial speech, scholars have paid little attention to the exclusion of false or misleading commercial speech from all First Amendment protection. Examining the underpinnings of the false and misleading speech exclusion illuminates the practical difficulties that abolishing the commercial speech doctrine would pose. Through a series of fact patterns in trademark and false advertising cases, this piece demonstrates that defining what is false or misleading is often debatable. If commercial speech were given First Amendment protection, consumer protection and First Amendment protection would be at odds. Rebutting the idea that constitutionally protected commercial speech could effectively address consumer abuses through fraud statues and would not be offensive to the First Amendment, the piece explains that subjecting commercial speech to First Amendment scrutiny would almost completely contract the scope of false advertising law and erode consumer protection. The piece concludes that while excluding commercial speech from constitutional protection has real costs, we are better off in a system that regulates false and misleading commercial speech without heightened First Amendment scrutiny

The Situational Structure of Primate Beliefs

This paper develops the situational model of primate beliefs from the Prior-Lurz line of thought. There is a strong skepticism concerning primate beliefs in the analytic tradition which holds that beliefs have to be propositional and non-human animals do not have them. The response offered in this paper is twofold. First, two arguments against the propositional model as applied to other animals are put forward: an a priori argument from referential opacity and an empirical argument from varieties of working memory. Second, the Prior-Lurz situational model based on state of affairs as opposed to propositions is introduced and defended with two significant modifications. With this model of primate beliefs we can make progress in understanding how other primates can have certain mindreading capacity

READING INSTINCTS AND SYMBOLS IN CORMAC McCARTHY’S THE ROAD

Skripsi berikut akan mencoba membahas novel berjudul The Road menggunakan psikoanalisis dan simbolisme. Penulis akan membahas bagaimana karakter – karakter dalam novel menggunakan insting mereka untuk bertahan hidup ataupun untuk mendapat apa yang mereka inginkan atau butuhkan. Penulis juga mencoba melihat obyek dan cerita dalam novel sebagai simbol dan mencoba mencari makna dibalik simbol – simbol tersebut. Penulis menggunakan studi pustaka dalam mengumpulkan data – data yang dibutuhkan dalam penulisan tesis ini. Penulis mengumpulkan data dari sumber – sumber tertulis maupun elektronik untuk mendukung teori yang digunakan untuk membahas The Road. Dan teori yang cocok calam hal ini adalah psikoanalisis dan simbolisme. Melalui pembahasan dalam skripsi ini penulis mengetahui bahwa karakter – karakter dalam novel ini bertindak mengikuti dorongan dari pikiran mereka masing – masing. Mereka bertindak berbeda satu sama lain karena pikiran manusia juga saling berbeda satu sama lain. Tetapi pada dasarnya insting dari karakter – karakter dalam novel hampir selalu menuntut kesenangan. The Road adalah sebuah novel dengan gaya penulisan dan jalan cerita yang unik sehingga sangat terbuka untuk dipelajari dengan menggunakan psiko-analisis termasuk simbolisme

What is Said and Indirect Speech Reports

In their Insensitive Semantics (2005) Cappelen and Lepore argue for the Controversial Aspect (CA) which is a part of their Speech Act Pluralism and which says that speakers don’t have privileged access to what they say. Gross (2006) criticizes C&L’s argument for CA and urges them to abandon that claim. I argue that on C&L’s broad understanding of the notion of what is said, CA (and whole SAP) is trivial, whereas on a more restricted understanding CA is indeed controversial and plausibly false. Moreover, the broad reading of what is said is incompatible with one of C&L’s tests for context-sensitivity