Food consumption norms based on age and income in the UK

Binary components of food reinforcement: Amplitude and persistence

BackgroundMany people exercise because they know it is good for their health. Although this is true, it can make us feel deserving of a reward and lead us to eat more indulgent, less healthy food than if we had not done any exercise. Generally, lower energy-dense (LED) foods are recognised as healthier choices than higher energy-dense (HED) options. Despite our intention to make healthy choices, seeing tempting higher-calorie foods on offer often side-tracks us. Priming is a psychological tool that makes specific changes to our environment that remind us of our motivation to be healthy. This makes it easier to choose a healthier option, by nudging us towards it without us even realising. However, it is currently unclear which method of priming achieves the best results.AimsOur study explores whether priming people to expect they will receive LED food leads them to make this healthier choice after exercise, even when also offered tempting less healthy HED foods at the moment of selection.MethodsOur study observed the foods selected by university athletes after their sports matches. Before the match, half of the participants were primed by asking them to choose a LED snack from the options we offered, which they would receive after the match. The remaining half of participants were not asked this same question. To distract the athletes from our observation of their food choices, participants completed a task prior to choosing their snack, which was disguised as a ‘thank you’ for taking part.ResultsOverall, we found the priming group did not choose LED foods significantly more than the control group, hence priming did not increase LED food selection.ConclusionImportantly, our results indicate that priming must be more noticeable to achieve its goal. Additionally, we demonstrated that priming may be less successful for young athletic individuals, compared to older and more overweight adults recruited in other studies. This highlights the importance of studying a broader demographic range of individuals from the general population. We support future research into this area, which will help us to tweak priming to achieve the best outcomes.Trial registrationISRCTN Registry, ISRCTN74601698. Date registered: 02/10/2020 (retrospectively registered).

The microwaves of the CMBR behave like stationary waves (or standing waves). They serve as an absolute framework of reference at rest.

Contributors of water intake in US children and adolescents: associations with dietary and meal characteristics—National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005–2006

Nutrient profiling systems (NPS) assist consumers in food choices. Several scores based on NPS have been proposed, but data on their clinical application are lacking. The food compass score (FCS) is a newly developed NPS per 100 kcal (from 1 “least healthy” to 100 “most healthy”). We examined the correlations of FCS with other indices, food groups, and meal patterns. A total of 346 students of the University of the Peloponnese (269 women and 77 men) participated. Dietary habits were evaluated with a food frequency questionnaire, and FCS, health star rating score (HSR), and MedDietScore were computed. Meal and snack frequency consumption was reported. Principal component analysis revealed three meal patterns: “early eater” (breakfast, morning snack and afternoon snack), “medium eater” (lunch and dinner), and “late eater” (bedtime snack). Pearson partial correlations between ranked variables were used to test the correlation coefficients between FCS, other scores, and meal patterns, after adjustment for age, sex, BMI, and underreporting. FCS was positively correlated to HSR (rho = 0.761, p ≤ 0.001) in a multi-adjusted analysis. In the highest tertile of MedDietScore FCS was also positively correlated to MedDietScore (rho = 0.379, p < 0.001). The FCS was positively correlated with juices, high-fat dairy, vegetables, legumes, fruits, and olive oil and negatively correlated with sodas, alcoholic drinks, red meat, refined grains, sweets, fats other than olive oil, fast foods, and coffee. In addition, it related positively to the “early eater” pattern (rho = 0.207, p < 0.001). The FCS was associated with other quality indices and better nutritional habits, such as being an early eater.

Risk Factors for Incident Coronary Artery Calcium in Younger (Age 32 to 45 Years) Versus Intermediate (46 to 64 Years) Versus Older (65 to 84 Years) Persons

Effect of Age on the Frequency of Anxiety Disorders in Major Depression With Psychotic Features

Ultra-processed foods are associated with chronic diseases, cardiometabolic factors and obesity. According to the NOVA system, foods are classified into four categories (from 1 = unprocessed to 4 = ultra-processed foods). The purpose of the present study was to assess the consumption of minimally processed foods (MPF) and ultra-processed foods (UPF) in university students and their relationship with obesity, Mediterranean diet adherence and meal patterns. In total, 346 students (269 women) of the University of Peloponnese participated. A food frequency questionnaire was used, and the MedDietScore was calculated. The % energy contribution of MPF and UPF was calculated. The identification of meal patterns was performed via principal component analysis. Both multivariate regression and Spearman’s correlations were used to measure the association of UPF/MPF consumption with anthropometric indices (body mass index, BMI and waist circumference, WC), Mediterranean diet adherence and early/late meal patterns. UPF and MPF provided 40.7 ± 13.6% and 44.3 ± 11.9% (mean ± standard deviation) of energy intake, respectively. In multi-adjusted linear regression models UPF consumption (% energy) was positively associated with WC in men but it was not related to BMI (total sample, men, women). UPF consumption was negatively related to the MedDietScore (Spearman rho = −0.214, p < 0.001) and an “early eating” pattern (Spearman rho = −0.120, p = 0.029) and positively associated with a “late eating” meal pattern (Spearman rho = 0.190, p = 0.001). MPF consumption was positively associated with the MedDietScore (Spearman rho = 0.309, p < 0.001) and an “early eating” pattern (Spearman rho = 0.240, p < 0.001). In conclusion, UPF consumption was positively related to WC in male university students. Nutritional and sociodemographic correlates of UPF consumption, such as low Mediterranean diet adherence and having a “late eating” pattern serve as a basis to better understand the UPF consumption-central obesity relation in young adults and should be considered in nutrition education programs for young adults.

We estimate how much caregiving men and women respectively do, and how much of the caregiving is done by older (65+) and younger persons, inside their household and for other households, in Spain and in Sweden. To assess this, we use self-reported hours of caregiving from two national surveys about caregiving, performed in 2014 (Spain, N = 2003; Sweden, N = 1193). Spain and Sweden have dissimilar household structures, and different social services for older (65+) persons. Caregivers, on average, provide many more hours of care in Spain than in Sweden. Women provide about 58% of all hours of caregiving, in Spain in all age groups, in Sweden only among younger caregivers. The reason is the dominance of partner caregivers among older Swedes, with older men and women providing equal hours of care. Family caregiving inside the household is more extensive in the more complex Spanish households than in Swedish households. Family care between households prevails in Sweden, where the large majority of older persons live with a partner only, or alone. This is increasingly common in Spain, although it remains at a lower level. We estimate that older persons provide between 22% and 33% of all hours of caregiving in Spain, and between 41% and 49% in Sweden. Patterns of caregiving appear to be determined mainly by demography and household structure.

A low socio-economic status (SES) is related to less healthy dietary habits, but the reasons for this remain unclear. We examined whether the absolute or relative importance of various food choice motives contributed to SES disparities in vegetable/fruit and energy-dense food intake. We analysed cross-sectional data from the FINRISK Study 2007 by means of structural equation modelling and used a shortened version of the Food Choice Questionnaire to assess the absolute importance of health, pleasure, convenience, price, familiarity and ethicality motives. We calculated the relative importance of each motive by dividing the participant's rating of it by his/her mean score on all motives. Dietary intake was measured with an FFQ. A population-based survey in Finland. Men (n 1691) and women (n 2059) aged 25-64 years. Higher education and income were related to a greater vegetable/fruit intake (β = 0·12, P < 0·001), while education was associated negatively with the consumption of energy-dense foods (β = -0·09, P < 0·001). Socio-economically disadvantaged individuals considered price and/or familiarity more important in their food choices in both absolute and relative terms. A higher income was related to a greater relative importance of health considerations. Relative motives were more strongly associated with vegetable/fruit and energy-dense food consumption than absolute motives and the relative importance of price, familiarity and health partly mediated the effects of the SES indicators on the consumption of these food items. Individual priorities in food choice motives, rather than the absolute importance of single motives, play a role in producing SES disparities in diet.

Introduction: The use of shared automated vehicles (SAVs) should lead to several societal and individual benefits, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced traffic, and improved mobility for persons who cannot safely drive themselves. We define SAVs as on-demand, fully automated vehicles in which passengers are paired with other riders traveling along a similar route. Previous research has shown that younger adults are more likely to report using conventional ridesharing services and are more accepting of new technologies including automated vehicles (AVs). However, older adults, particularly those who may be close to retiring from driving, stand to greatly benefit from SAV services. In order for SAVs to deliver on their aforementioned benefits, they must be viewed favorably and utilized. We sought to investigate how short educational and/or experiential videos might impact younger, middle-aged, and older adult respondents’ anticipated acceptance and attitudes toward SAVs. Knowing what types of introductory experiences improve different age groups’ perceptions of SAVs will be beneficial for tailoring campaigns aiming to promote SAV usage. Methods: We deployed an online survey using the platform Prolific for middle-aged and older respondents, and our departmental participant pool for younger adults, collecting 585 total responses that resulted in 448 valid responses. Respondents answered questions regarding their demographic attributes, their ridesharing history, preconceptions of technology, as well as their anticipated acceptance attitudes towards SAVs as measured by the dimensions of the Automated Vehicle User Perception Survey (AVUPS). After this, respondents were randomly assigned to an intervention condition where they either watched 1) an educational video about how SAVs work and their potential benefits, 2) an experiential video showing a AV navigating traffic, 3) both the experiential and educational videos, or 4) a control video explaining how ridesharing works. Anticipated acceptance attitudes towards SAVs were measured again after this intervention and difference scores calculated to investigate the effect of the intervention conditions. Prolific respondents were paid at a rate of $9.50/hour and younger adults received course credit. Results: Controlling for preconceptions of technology and ridesharing experience, a MANOVA was run on the difference scores of the dimensions of the AVUPS (intention to use, trust/reliability, perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), safety, control/driving-efficacy, cost, authority, media, and social influence). Both older and middle-aged adults expressed significantly greater increases in PEOU and PU of SAVs than younger adults. We also observed an interaction between age and condition for both PU and PEOU. For PU, older adults’ difference scores were found to be significantly greater than younger adults’ for the control video condition. With PEOU, older adults’ difference scores were significantly greater than both younger adults’ for the control video condition, and middle-aged adults had greater difference scores for the educational-only video condition than younger or older adults. Discussion: The increases in PU observed for older adults in the control condition suggests that educating them on how to use currently available ridesharing services might transfer to and/or highlight the benefits that automated ridesharing might provide. The PEOU interactions also suggest that middle-aged adults might respond more positively than younger or older adults to an educational introduction to SAVs. Conclusion: The positive findings pertaining to PU and PEOU show that exposure to information related to SAVs has a positive impact on these attitudes. PU’s and PEOU’s positive relationship to behavioral intentions (BI) in the Technology Acceptance Model, coupled with the findings from this study, bode well for higher fidelity interventions seeking to inform and/or give individuals experience with SAVs. Providing information on how currently available ridesharing services work helped our older adult respondents recognize the potential usefulness of SAVs. Knowing that different age groups may respond better to educational versus experiential interventions, for example middle-aged adults in this study responding more positively to the educational video condition than younger or older adults, may be useful for targeted promotional campaigns.

Updating prior information with new information in accordance with Bayesian principles is a difficult task. Younger adult decision makers deviate from Bayes’ theorem by either overweighting prior information (i.e., using a conservatism heuristic) or overweighting new information (i.e., using a representativeness heuristic) on decision tasks without feedback. Similar to younger adults, older adults make decisions that require belief updating. Given agerelated decrements in cognitive control, older adults may be at a disadvantage compared with younger adults when updating beliefs. Prior research shows no age differences when making decisions under risk, however older adults perform worse than younger adults when making decisions under ambiguity. Currently it is unknown how older adults use heuristics when updating beliefs about risk and ambiguous information compared with younger adults. The primary aim of this dissertation was to examine age-related differences in the use of heuristics during belief updating, as well as the cognitive processes and neural correlates that underpin behaviour. In three experiments, younger and older adults completed a belief updating task with and without feedback using an urn-ball paradigm. The main results showed that both younger and older adults committed the representativeness error more than the conservatism error, with no age differences observed when updating beliefs without feedback but with younger adults updating beliefs more accurately than older adults with feedback. Further, age differences in the neural correlates that underlie belief updating showed evidence that older adults recruit additional resources in frontal regions of the brain to facilitate performance compared with younger adults. Event-related potentials showed evidence of cognitive control in response to conflicting information in both age groups, but a diminished neural response to feedback in older compared with younger adults. Additionally, while younger adults were not influenced by ambiguous information, older adults avoided committing the representativeness error only when new information was ambiguous. Last, individual differences in numeracy and cognitive reflection, but not thinking disposition, modulated belief updating performance. Together, the results show that younger and older adults can learn to update beliefs with feedback but with younger adults learning to a greater degree than older adults, especially when information is ambiguous.

Eating Pattern Analyses: The Whole Is More than the Sum of Its Parts

10602 Background: Breast cancer (BC) remains a leading cause of death among women globally. Understanding the role of modifiable risk factors is critical for designing targeted prevention strategies. The 2021 GBD study offers a comprehensive analysis of global health, quantifying the impact of diseases and risk factors on morbidity and mortality worldwide. This study provides an updated risk factor analysis in relation to women’s BC mortality over the past three decades. Methods: Data from the study were used to examine trends in BC mortality in the United States from 1990 to 2021, stratified by age group representing younger pre-menopausal (ages 20-54) and older post-menopausal women (ages ≥55), associated with five key risk factors: tobacco use, red meat consumption, alcohol consumption, high body mass index (BMI), and high fasting plasma glucose (FPG). Age-standardized mortality rates (ASMR) were calculated for each factor, and differences between age groups were analyzed. All rates were reported per 100,000 population. Joinpoint regression analysis was conducted to evaluate trends. Results: In 2021, a high red meat diet (consuming &gt;70 g/day of red meat), was the leading risk factor for BC-ASMR overall (2.3), both in older (11.4) and younger (1.4) women, contributing 14% to ASMR across all age groups. Older women had significantly higher ASMR for all risk factors (Table 1). From 1990 to 2021, tobacco-associated BC-ASMR exhibited the greatest decline, with a global reduction of 55.06%, more pronounced in younger (58.39%) than older (46.58%) women. Alcohol-related mortality also decreased significantly, more evident in younger (37.69%) than older (13.09%) women. While the absolute increase in risk factor-associated ASMR was observed with high FPG (+4.4%), a proportional ASMR increase was observed for all three metabolism-related risk factors, including high FPG (+75%), high BMI (+32%), and alcohol use (+14%). High FPG was associated with increased BC-ASMR in both age groups, while younger women experienced a significant rise due to high BMI (+689%). Conclusions: These findings highlight the impact of modifiable risk factors on BC mortality. There is a notable reduction in tobacco and alcohol-related deaths, particularly among younger women, likely due to public health campaigns and smoking cessation programs. Moreover, the rising prevalence of alcohol intake in older women, the growing impact of metabolic-related morbidity in younger women, and the hormonal changes amplifying BMI-related risks in post-menopausal women, stress the need for targeted health interventions that could markedly reduce the burden of BC mortality globally. Risk factors Overall trend(1990-2021) Ages 20-54 Ages ≥55 Tobacco 1.4→0.6 1.1→0.5 5.2→2.8 Alcohol use 1.4→1 1.3→0.8 4.6→4 High FPG 1.1→1.1 0.36→0.39 5.7→6.2 High BMI 2→1.6 0.02→0.1 12.5→10.4 Diet high in red meat 3.9→2.3 2.3→1.4 17.4→1.5

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which selected components derived from Pender's Health Promotion Model (1982) explained engaging in health promotion practices in a sample of 477 persons 65 years and older. One directional hypothesis was tested using canonical correlation analysis. Three significant canonical variates were demonstrated, explaining 88.7 percent of variance. Older healthy persons with high self-esteem and internal locus of control reported practicing five of the six health promotion strategies. Men with higher income and self-esteem but poorer health less often exercised or ate well. Older married subjects with higher incomes who were internally controlled were more likely to engage in exercise, health responsibility and stress management but not in interpersonal support. Findings provide direct multivariate support for the additive nature of the relationships posited in the Health Promotion Model.