scholarly journals GMO Food Labels Do Not Affect College Student Food Selection, Despite Negative Attitudes towards GMOs

Author(s):  
Katrina Oselinsky ◽  
Ashlie Johnson ◽  
Pamela Lundeberg ◽  
Abby Johnson Holm ◽  
Megan Mueller ◽  
...  

US Public Law 114–216 dictates that food producers in the United States of America will be required to label foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) starting in 2022; however, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating how U.S. consumers would use food labels that indicate the presence or absence of GMOs. The aim of this two-phase study was to determine how attitudes towards GMOs relate to food choices and how labels indicating the presence or absence of GMOs differentially impact choices among college students—the age group which values transparent food labeling more than any other. Participants (n = 434) made yes/no choices for each of 64 foods. In both phases of the study, participants were randomly assigned to seeing GMO Free labels, contains GMOs labels, or no GMO labels. Across the two phases, 85% of participants reported believing that GMOs were at least somewhat dangerous to health (42% believed GMOs to be dangerous), yet in both studies, although eye-tracking data verified that participants attended to the GMO labels, these labels did not significantly affect food choices. Although college consumers may believe GMOs to be dangerous, their food choices do not reflect this belief.

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Ovi Eka Faradila ◽  
Mury Kuswari ◽  
Nazhif Gifari

<em>This study was aimed to analyze differences in food selection and factors related to adolescent girls in the urban and rural high schools. The sampling technique used is the sample size difference of 2 proportions. Data was collected by giving questionnaires to respondents which included food choices and its related factors such as social media, body image, nutritional knowledge, food labels, and peers. Body weight and height used to measure the anthropometric data. The statistical test used in this research was the t-test. There were no differences in food choices, use of social media, perception of actual body shape, perception of desired body shape, and perception of ideal body shape in urban and rural (p&gt; 0,05). There were differences in actual body shape with BMI, nutritional knowledge, understanding food labels , and peer influence in rural and urban (p &lt;0,05). Found differences in perceptions of actual body shape with BMI, nutritional knowledge, understanding food labels, and peer influence in urban and rural areas. There were no differences in food choices, but there were differences in factors related.</em>


2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 244-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Karp ◽  
Gary Wong ◽  
Marguerite Orsi

Abstract. Introduction: Foods dense in micronutrients are generally more expensive than those with higher energy content. These cost-differentials may put low-income families at risk of diminished micronutrient intake. Objectives: We sought to determine differences in the cost for iron, folate, and choline in foods available for purchase in a low-income community when assessed for energy content and serving size. Methods: Sixty-nine foods listed in the menu plans provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for low-income families were considered, in 10 domains. The cost and micronutrient content for-energy and per-serving of these foods were determined for the three micronutrients. Exact Kruskal-Wallis tests were used for comparisons of energy costs; Spearman rho tests for comparisons of micronutrient content. Ninety families were interviewed in a pediatric clinic to assess the impact of food cost on food selection. Results: Significant differences between domains were shown for energy density with both cost-for-energy (p < 0.001) and cost-per-serving (p < 0.05) comparisons. All three micronutrient contents were significantly correlated with cost-for-energy (p < 0.01). Both iron and choline contents were significantly correlated with cost-per-serving (p < 0.05). Of the 90 families, 38 (42 %) worried about food costs; 40 (44 %) had chosen foods of high caloric density in response to that fear, and 29 of 40 families experiencing both worry and making such food selection. Conclusion: Adjustments to USDA meal plans using cost-for-energy analysis showed differentials for both energy and micronutrients. These differentials were reduced using cost-per-serving analysis, but were not eliminated. A substantial proportion of low-income families are vulnerable to micronutrient deficiencies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052097031
Author(s):  
Cary Leonard Klemmer ◽  
Ashley C. Schuyler ◽  
Mary Rose Mamey ◽  
Sheree M. Schrager ◽  
Carl Andrew Castro ◽  
...  

Prior research among military personnel has indicated that sexual harassment, stalking, and sexual assault during military service are related to negative health sequelae. However, research specific to LGBT U.S. service members is limited. The current study aimed to explore the health, service utilization, and service-related impact of stalking and sexual victimization experiences in a sample of active-duty LGBT U.S. service members ( N = 248). Respondent-driven sampling was used to recruit study participants. U.S. service members were eligible to participate if they were 18 years or older and active-duty members of the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, or U.S. Air Force. This study included a sizeable portion of transgender service members ( N = 58, 23.4%). Sociodemographic characteristics, characteristics of military service, health, and sexual and stalking victimization in the military were assessed. Regression was used to examine relationships between health and service outcomes and sexual and stalking victimization during military service. Final adjusted models showed that experiencing multiple forms of victimization in the military increased the odds of visiting a mental health clinician and having elevated somatic symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology, anxiety, and suicidality. Sexual and stalking victimization during U.S. military service was statistically significantly related to the mental and physical health of LGBT U.S. service members. Interventions to reduce victimization experiences and support LGBT U.S. service members who experience these types of violence are indicated. Research that examines the role of LGBT individuals’ experiences and organizational and peer factors, including social support, leadership characteristics, and institutional policies in the United States military is needed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Schlegel ◽  
Sharon A. Carstairs ◽  
Gozde Ozakinci

Abstract Background Many 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. Aims Our 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. Methods Our 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. Results Overall, we found the priming group did not choose LED foods significantly more than the control group, hence priming did not increase LED food selection. Conclusion Importantly, 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 registration ISRCTN Registry, ISRCTN74601698. Date registered: 02/10/2020 (retrospectively registered).


Author(s):  
Tamas Szili-Torok ◽  
Jens Rump ◽  
Torsten Luther ◽  
Sing-Chien Yap

Abstract Better understanding of the lead curvature, movement and their spatial distribution may be beneficial in developing lead testing methods, guiding implantations and improving life expectancy of implanted leads. Objective The aim of this two-phase study was to develop and test a novel biplane cine-fluoroscopy-based method to evaluate input parameters for bending stress in leads based on their in vivo 3D motion using precisely determined spatial distributions of lead curvatures. Potential tensile, compressive or torque forces were not subjects of this study. Methods A method to measure lead curvature and curvature evolution was initially tested in a phantom study. In the second phase using this model 51 patients with implanted ICD leads were included. A biplane cine-fluoroscopy recording of the intracardiac region of the lead was performed. The lead centerline and its motion were reconstructed in 3D and used to define lead curvature and curvature changes. The maximum absolute curvature Cmax during a cardiac cycle, the maximum curvature amplitude Camp and the maximum curvature Cmax@amp at the location of Camp were calculated. These parameters can be used to characterize fatigue stress in a lead under cyclical bending. Results The medians of Camp and Cmax@amp were 0.18 cm−1 and 0.42 cm−1, respectively. The median location of Cmax was in the atrium whereas the median location of Camp occurred close to where the transit through the tricuspid valve can be assumed. Increased curvatures were found for higher slack grades. Conclusion Our results suggest that reconstruction of 3D ICD lead motion is feasible using biplane cine-fluoroscopy. Lead curvatures can be computed with high accuracy and the results can be implemented to improve lead design and testing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-73
Author(s):  
David J. Pearce

Rust is a relatively new programming language that has gained significant traction since its v1.0 release in 2015. Rust aims to be a systems language that competes with C/C++. A claimed advantage of Rust is a strong focus on memory safety without garbage collection. This is primarily achieved through two concepts, namely, reference lifetimes and borrowing . Both of these are well-known ideas stemming from the literature on region-based memory management and linearity / uniqueness . Rust brings both of these ideas together to form a coherent programming model. Furthermore, Rust has a strong focus on stack-allocated data and, like C/C++ but unlike Java, permits references to local variables. Type checking in Rust can be viewed as a two-phase process: First, a traditional type checker operates in a flow-insensitive fashion; second, a borrow checker enforces an ownership invariant using a flow-sensitive analysis. In this article, we present a lightweight formalism that captures these two phases using a flow-sensitive type system that enforces “ type and borrow safety .” In particular, programs that are type and borrow safe will not attempt to dereference dangling pointers. Our calculus core captures many aspects of Rust, including copy- and move-semantics, mutable borrowing, reborrowing, partial moves, and lifetimes. In particular, it remains sufficiently lightweight to be easily digested and understood and, we argue, still captures the salient aspects of reference lifetimes and borrowing. Furthermore, extensions to the core can easily add more complex features (e.g., control-flow, tuples, method invocation). We provide a soundness proof to verify our key claims of the calculus. We also provide a reference implementation in Java with which we have model checked our calculus using over 500B input programs. We have also fuzz tested the Rust compiler using our calculus against 2B programs and, to date, found one confirmed compiler bug and several other possible issues.


Author(s):  
Vishu Madaan ◽  
Aditya Roy ◽  
Charu Gupta ◽  
Prateek Agrawal ◽  
Anand Sharma ◽  
...  

AbstractCOVID-19 (also known as SARS-COV-2) pandemic has spread in the entire world. It is a contagious disease that easily spreads from one person in direct contact to another, classified by experts in five categories: asymptomatic, mild, moderate, severe, and critical. Already more than 66 million people got infected worldwide with more than 22 million active patients as of 5 December 2020 and the rate is accelerating. More than 1.5 million patients (approximately 2.5% of total reported cases) across the world lost their life. In many places, the COVID-19 detection takes place through reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests which may take longer than 48 h. This is one major reason of its severity and rapid spread. We propose in this paper a two-phase X-ray image classification called XCOVNet for early COVID-19 detection using convolutional neural Networks model. XCOVNet detects COVID-19 infections in chest X-ray patient images in two phases. The first phase pre-processes a dataset of 392 chest X-ray images of which half are COVID-19 positive and half are negative. The second phase trains and tunes the neural network model to achieve a 98.44% accuracy in patient classification.


Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Marika Dello Russo ◽  
Carmela Spagnuolo ◽  
Stefania Moccia ◽  
Donato Angelino ◽  
Nicoletta Pellegrini ◽  
...  

Pasta represents a staple food in many populations and, in recent years, an increasing number of pasta items has been placed on the market to satisfy needs and trends. The aims of this work were: (i) to investigate the nutritional composition of the different types of pasta currently sold in Italy by collecting the nutrition facts on their packaging; (ii) to compare energy, nutrient and salt content per 100 g and serving in fresh and dried pasta; (iii) to compare the nutrition declaration in pairs of products with and without different declarations (i.e., gluten free (GF), organic, and nutrition claims (NC)). A total of 756 items, made available by 13 retailers present on the Italian market, were included in the analysis. Data showed a wide difference between dried and fresh pasta, with high inter-type variability. A negligible amount of salt was observed in all types of pasta, except for stuffed products, which had a median high quantity of salt (>1 g/100 g and ~1.5 g/serving). Organic pasta had higher fibre and lower protein contents compared to conventional pasta. GF products were higher in carbohydrate and fat but lower in fibre and protein than not-GF products, while only a higher fibre content was found in pasta with NC compared to products not boasting claims. Overall, the results show high variability in terms of nutrition composition among the pasta items currently on the market, supporting the importance of reading and understanding food labels for making informed food choices.


2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-459
Author(s):  
Daniel Bodansky ◽  
Simon Lester

European Communities—Measures Affecting the Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products. WT/DS291/R, WT/DS292/R, & WT/DS293/R. At <http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_status_e.htm>.World Trade Organization Panel, September 29, 2006 (adopted November 21, 2006).In what was by far the longest panel report in the World Trade Organization’s history, a WTO panel ruled last September that various parts of the European Communities’ regulatory regime for the approval and marketing of “biotech products” (that is, products that contain, or are made from or with, genetically modified organisms (GMOs)) violated the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement). The panel report was not appealed and was adopted by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body on November 21, 2006.In recent years, a heated international debate has developed regarding the production and consumption of food made from or with GMOs. Among the key players in this debate, the United States, supported by many companies who have developed GMO-based products, has pushed for their acceptance; by contrast, the European Communities (EC) and its member states, backed by consumer groups and other activists, have tried to restrict their use through various regulations.


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