The consumption pattern of convenience food: A comparison of different income levels in South Korea

The interest in convenience food has increased over the years. Many researchers have tried to discover what factors affect the consumption of convenience food. Despite the diversity of studies, few studies emphasize a household’s income. The aim of this article is to identify the different consumption patterns between upper, middle, and lower income brackets. Generally, households with higher income consumed more convenience food or the relationship was not significant. However, many convenience foods are regarded as nutritionally unbalanced and have a lower quality. So, the hypothesis cannot be easily confirmed because there are tradeoffs not only between health, as nutrition balance and cost, but also health and convenience. Thus, there is a need to indicate the divergent attributes of buying convenience food in a distinct income group. In addition, the convenience food is subdivided into two distinct categories: convenience food as a substitution for a whole meal (unhealthy) and substitution as part of a diet (healthy). We found that higher income groups purchase healthier convenience food while lower income groups purchase unhealthier convenience food. Also there are distinct attributes that influence the consumption of healthy and unhealthy convenience food

Home Meal Replacement Market Segmentation: A Food-Related Life Style

The Home Meal Replacement (HMR) sector has been growing rapidly in the food industry. Due to the conveniences that the HMR product offers, the target consumers are generally busy workers and/or individuals who live alone. This study aims to investigate factors that affect the purchasing of HMR products and to formulate strategies for future HMR product sales. This study examines the effect of five independent variables: dine-out frequency, dine-out costs, and the employment status of housewives, involvement of meal preparation, and the role of overload on HMR purchase behavior. The study also examines what influences the purchasing of HMR products through different kinds of lifestyles. Surveys were conducted with a panel of housewives from major metropolitan areas in South Korea and configured by clusters according to different lifestyles. The panel of housewives was divided into four groups based on Food Related Lifestyles: Price Insensitive Group, Pride in Cooking Group, Indifference to Health Group and Against Eating Out Group. The results indicate that HMR sales target segments are consumers who tend to dine-out more and desire a low involvement in meal preparation than consumers who are busy and have less time to cook at home

Artificial Control of Cell Signaling Using a Photocleavable Cobalt(III)-Nitrosyl Complex

Cells use gaseous molecules such as nitric oxide (NO) to transmit both intracellular and intercellular signals. In principle, the endogenous small molecules regulate physiological changes, but it is unclear how randomly diffusive molecules trigger and discriminate signaling programs. Herein, it is shown that gasotransmitters use time-dependent dynamics to discriminate the endogenous and exogenous inputs. For a real-time stimulation of cell signaling, we synthesized a photo-cleavable metal-nitrosyl complex, [Co-III(MDAP)(NO)(CH3CN)](2+) (MDAP=N,N '-dimethyl-2,11-diaza[3,3](2,6)pyridinophane), which can stably deliver and selectively release NO with fine temporal resolution in the cytosol, and used this to study the extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs), revealing how cells use both exogenous and endogenous NO to disentangle cellular responses. This technique can be to understand how diverse cellular signaling networks are dynamically interconnected and also to control drug delivery systems

Plant-Expressed Receptor Binding Domain of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Elicits Humoral Immunity in Mice

The current 15-month coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has accounted for 3.77 million deaths and enormous worldwide social and economic losses. A high volume of vaccine production is urgently required to eliminate COVID-19. Inexpensive and robust production platforms will improve the distribution of vaccines to resource-limited countries. Plant species offer such platforms, particularly through the production of recombinant proteins to serve as immunogens. To achieve this goal, here we expressed the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein in the glycoengineered-tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana to provide a candidate subunit vaccine. This recombinant RBD elicited humoral immunity in mice via induction of highly neutralizing antibodies. These findings provide a strong foundation to further advance the development of plant-expressed RBD antigens for use as an effective, safe, and inexpensive SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Moreover, our study further highlights the utility of plant species for vaccine development