Conceptual model to explain turning points in travel behavior: Application to bicycle use

Existing knowledge on cycling behavior, as with travel behavior in general, is based mainly on cross-sectional studies. It is questionable how much can be learned about the reasons for behavioral change from such studies. A major investment program to promote cycling in 12 English cities and towns between 2008 and 2011 provided the opportunity to study the bicycle use of residents and how that use was affected by the investment. Face-to-face interviews collected biographical information on travel behavior and life-change events during the investment period for 144 research participants and probed the reasons for changes in bicycle use. Theory (from the life course perspective) and preliminary analysis of the interview data were used to develop a conceptual model that hypothesized that turning points in travel behavior were triggered by contextual change (a life-change event or change in the external environment) and mediated by intrinsic motivations, facilitating conditions, and personal history. The model provided an effective means of explaining turning points in bicycle use. The analysis of the interview data showed how the nature of behavioral influences (in particular, life-change events and intrinsic motivations) varied over the life course. The research highlights the advantages of viewing travel behavior change in the context of people’s evolving lives and how that approach can help in developing transport policies and practices

Social factors and obesity: an investigation of the role of health behaviours

OBJECTIVES: This study evaluated a behavioural model of the relation between social factors and obesity, in which differences in body mass index (BMI) across sociodemographic groups were hypothesized to be attributable to social group differences in health behaviours affecting energy expenditure (physical activity, diet and alcohol consumption and weight control). METHODS: A total of 8667 adults who participated in the 1995 Australian National Health and Nutrition Surveys provided data on a range of health factors including objectively measured height and weight, health behaviours, and social factors including family status, employment status, housing situation and migration status. RESULTS: Social factors remained significant predictors of BMI after controlling for all health behaviours. Neither social factors alone, nor health behaviours alone, adequately explained the variance in BMI. Gender-specific interactions were found between social factors and individual health behaviours. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that social factors moderate the relation between BMI and weight-related behaviours, and that the mechanisms underlying sociodemographic group differences in obesity may vary among men and women. Additional factors are likely to act in conjunction with current health behaviours to explain variation in obesity prevalence across sociodemographic groups.<br /

Socioeconomic position and overweight among adolescents: data from birth cohort studies in Brazil and the UK

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Developed and developing countries are facing rapid increases in overweight and obesity among children and adolescents. The patterns of overweight/obesity differ by age, sex, rural or urban residence and socioeconomic position (SEP) and vary between and within countries.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We investigated patterns of SEP – overweight status association among adolescents from the UK (ALSPAC) and Brazil (the 1982 and 1993 Pelotas birth cohort studies).</p> <p>All analyses were performed separately for males and females. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the relationships between overweight status and two SEP indicators – family income and maternal education.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A strong positive association was observed in 11-year-old boys from the 1993 Pelotas cohort, with higher prevalence of overweight among the least poor and among those whose mothers had more years of schooling (<it>x</it>²for linear trend p < 0.001). In ALSPAC study higher prevalence of overweight was seen among boys whose mothers had lower educational achievement (<it>x</it>²for linear trend p = 0.006). Among 11 year-old girls from 1993 Pelotas cohort study there was a positive association (higher prevalence of overweight in the higher socioeconomic and educational strata, <it>x</it>²for linear trend p < 0.001 and p = 0.01, respectively) while an inverse association was found in the ALSPAC study (<it>x</it>²for linear trend p < 0.001). Among males from the 1982 cohort study, overweight at 18 years of age showed a positive association with both SEP indicators while among females, the reverse association was found.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of this study demonstrate that the social patterning of overweight varies between and within populations over time. Specific approaches should be developed within populations in order to contain the obesity epidemic and reduce disparities.</p

Meals in western eating and drinking

Meals are a way of organizing eating into events that have a particular structure and form, and they play an indisputable and even self-evident role within the rhythms and routines of everyday life. In late modern societies, concern about the fate of meals has arisen in both public and academic discourse. It has been suggested that eating is characterized today by individualization, destructuration, and informalization and that communal meals are increasingly being replaced by snacks and solitary eating. This chapter focuses on meals in today’s affluent societies and reflects on why meals are considered important, how meals are defined, and what material elements and social dimensions they contain. It looks at how societal and cultural changes and ecological concerns may influence the organization and future of meals, and it suggests that the content of meals will change in response to the need to diminish the ecological burden of food production and consumption. In particular, plant-based options will at least partly need to replace meat and other animal-based foods. However, there is no reason to expect that the meal as a social institution will break down. Despite the fact that not all meals are characterized by conviviality and companionship, they continue to serve as a significant arena of human sociability and togetherness. Sharing food is, after all, an essential part of being human.Non peer reviewe

Medicalization of eating and feeding

A variety of developments over the past century have produced the conditions in which eating and feeding are transformed from practices embedded in social or cultural relations into explicit medical practices. The rise of medical science, expansion of the pharmaceutical and food industries, escalating concern over diet‐related diseases and conditions, and growing anxiety over infant and childhood development have contributed to a process of medicalization. Medicalization is a sociological concept that analyses the expansion of medical terminology, interventions, or practitioners into areas of the life that were previously considered outside the medical sphere. For instance, under‐eating has previously been defined using theological language, as an act of fasting demonstrating a saintly character. Such practices are now understood through medical terms of anorexia nervosa, malnutrition, or general diagnoses such as “eating disorders not otherwise specified.” Individuals engaged in under‐ or over‐eating practices are increasingly defined by medical concepts (anorexia nervosa and obesity) and treated in medical spaces (hospitals, clinics, or rehabilitation centres) through medical interventions (pharmaceuticals, surgery, psychotherapy, or dietary regimens). Likewise, infant feeding (breast or formula) is understood as a practice that requires monitoring and instruction from medical practitioners. Further, eating in general is progressively invested with medical significance. Foods and diets are touted as possessing a therapeutic or health enhancing capacity that indicates an individual’s or population’s present and future health. Due to the high regard for, and influence of, medical science in the West, medicalization studies primarily focus on Western contexts. Medicalization does have an impact on non‐Western societies and the developing world, however its influence emanates from Western biomedicine, industries, and policies. There is important work to be done in examining the process of medicalization in non‐Western contexts, however this article is limited to the Western context ( Hunt, 1999). To analyse the medicalization of eating and feeding it is important to first sketch the theoretical and historical background of medicalization as a sociological concept. The relationship between eating and medicine is extensive. In order to focus the discussion, three examples are used – under‐eating, over‐ eating and infant feeding. This background focuses the analysis of the forces driving the medicalization of eating and feeding. Finally, in elaborating the influences and consequences of the medicalization of eating and feeding, some of the central ethical implications are identified and discusse

Associations between nutritional properties of food and consumer perceptions related to weight management

Consumer perceptions of food (for example, how filling or healthy) influence eating behaviour and appetite control. Therefore approaches to understand the global nutritional attributes of foods that predict the strength of consumer perceptions are of academic and commercial interest. The current research describes the development of a flexible platform for systematically mapping the global nutritional attributes of foods (both objective and perceived) to consumer perceptions of those foods. The platform consists of a database of standardised UK food images (currently n= 300), linked to a catalogue of detailed perceptual, nutritional, sensory, cost, and psychological information ('nutritional attributes'). The platform also incorporates demographic and psychometric questionnaires to examine the importance of nutritional attributes on consumer perceptions within or between relevant target groups. In the current study, the platform was applied to a sample of dieting and non-dieting British men and women (n= 887) to examine the global attributes of a subset of foods (n= 75) and their association with successful weight management (i.e. supportive of weight loss, weight loss maintenance or prevention of weight gain). Generalised linear models identified energy density, cost (£/kcal), perceived energy content and satiating capacity as the main nutritional attributes underlying dieters' and non-dieters' perception of successful weight management food. Additionally, pleasantness, and desire not to (over) eat were uniquely associated with dieters' perception of food as good for weight management; pleasantness was positively associated with weight management and desire to eat was negatively associated with weight management. Therefore, global nutritional attributes of foods can predict and distinguish the extent consumers' perceive a food to be related to successful weight management. This platform will be extended to increase the variety of foods and specificity of nutritional attributes in the database suitable for a range of commercial, academic or clinical research applications

Area-level deprivation and adiposity in children: is the relationship linear?

OBJECTIVE: It has been suggested that childhood obesity is inversely associated with deprivation, such that the prevalence is higher in more deprived groups. However, comparatively few studies actually use an area-level measure of deprivation, limiting the scope to assess trends in the association with obesity for this indicator. Furthermore, most assume a linear relationship. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate associations between area-level deprivation and three measures of adiposity in children: body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR). DESIGN: This is a cross-sectional study in which data were collected on three occasions a year apart (2005-2007). SUBJECTS: Data were available for 13,333 children, typically aged 11-12 years, from 37 schools and 542 lower super-output areas (LSOAs). MEASURES: Stature, mass and WC. Obesity was defined as a BMI and WC exceeding the 95th centile according to British reference data. WHtR exceeding 0.5 defined obesity. The Index of Multiple Deprivation affecting children (IDACI) was used to determine area-level deprivation. RESULTS: Considerable differences in the prevalence of obesity exist between the three different measures. However, for all measures of adiposity the highest probability of being classified as obese is in the middle of the IDACI range. This relationship is more marked in girls, such that the probability of being obese for girls living in areas at the two extremes of deprivation is around half that at the peak, occurring in the middle. CONCLUSION: These data confirm the high prevalence of obesity in children and suggest that the relationship between obesity and residential area-level deprivation is not linear. This is contrary to the 'deprivation theory' and questions the current understanding and interpretation of the relationship between obesity and deprivation in children. These results could help make informed decisions at the local level

The Micropolitics of Obesity: Materialism, Markets and Food Sovereignty

This article shifts focus from an individualised and anthropocentric perspective on obesity, and uses a new materialist analysis to explore the assemblages of materialities producing fat and slim bodies. We report data from a study of adults’ accounts of food decision-making and practices, investigating circulations of matter and desires that affect the production, distribution, accumulation and dispersal of fat, and disclose a micropolitics of obesity, which affects bodies in both ‘becoming-fat’ and ‘becoming-slim’ assemblages. These assemblages comprise bodies, food, fat, physical environments, food producers and processing industries, supermarkets and other food retailers and outlets, diet regimens and weight loss clubs, and wider social, cultural and economic formations, along with the thoughts, feelings, ideas and human desires concerning food consumption and obesity. The analysis reveals the significance of the marketisation of food, and discusses whether public health responses to obesity should incorporate a food sovereignty component