Food attitudes and consumer behavior towards food in conflict-affected zones during the COVID-19 pandemic: case of the Palestinian territories

PurposeGlobal lockdowns and restrictions linked to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have affected food environments and consumption patterns. Conflict-affected countries are disproportionately affected from economic and food security perspectives. In this regard, the Palestinian territories (namely West Bank and Gaza Strip), which face a number of issues such as Israeli military and economic control, overcrowded cities and refugee camps (especially in Gaza Strip), rising poverty and food insecurity, are an especially interesting case study. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the selection and intake of foods and drinks, as well as consumer behavior and attitude toward food in the Palestinian territories.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws upon an online survey in the Palestinian territories administered in Arabic through the Survey Monkey platform from September 15 to October 10, 2020, with 322 adults. The survey findings were analyzed using descriptive statistics and several nonparametric tests. Particularly, the U-Mann Whitney test was used in dichotomous, categorical independent variables (e.g. gender), while the Kruskal–Wallis test was run to analyze multi-choice responses (e.g. occupation).FindingsThe results reveal that food attitudes and consumer behavior towards food have been widely affected. First, they reveal that Palestinians try to have healthier diets but ate more between meals (e.g. snacks). Second, the pandemic transformed respondents' shopping behavior and induced panic buying, negatively affecting food affordability due to increased prices of some foods (e.g. fruits and vegetables). Some food behaviors were shaped by negative psychological determinants (e.g. depression and anxiety). The pandemic effects are moderated by different sociodemographics (age, education and income). COVID-19 negatively affected food security but also opened a “window of opportunity” to trigger the transition towards more sustainable diets.Originality/valueThe paper results show that the eventual effects of COVID-19 will most likely vary from country to country, based not only on the epidemiological circumstances but also, among other factors, on the baseline socioeconomic situation and shock resilience. The findings contribute to the clarification and critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on food behaviors in the Palestinian territories, which would have several policy implications.

Different Meanings of Proper Nutrition: The Sociopolitical Dynamics of the Relationship between Body and State in the 1970s and 2010s Poland

In this article, we comparatively analyze expert discourses and lay attitudes to healthy eating in socialist and contemporary Poland. The investigation makes apparent significant changes that have occurred in between these two periods. From legitimate and peremptory knowledge with an unchangeable and universal character, dietary guidance evolved into being much less authoritative in nature, facilitating various alternative ways of thinking and debate. The recipients of nutritional advice have also changed: from subordinated citizens and only passive objects of experts’ actions to the self-governing neoliberal subjects, which are active agents of their own choices and are individually responsible for their well-being. During socialist times, proper eating, in line with dietitian’s recommendations, was of secondary importance as Polish citizens were primarily motivated by the need to procure food of adequate quality and in sufficient quantity. Nowadays, under free-market economics and changing lifestyles, eating healthily is an issue of fundamental concern for many people. This analysis reveals that the production of nutritional knowledge is tightly related to sociopolitical contexts and that changing food attitudes are both influenced by post-socialist transformations as well as broader sociocultural processes.

Advertising Unhealthy Food to Children: on the Importance of Regulations, Parenting Styles, and Media Literacy

Purpose of Review Childhood obesity is a global health concern. And a number of studies have indicated that food promotions affect children’s food attitudes, preferences, and food choices for foods high in fat and sugar, which potentially impacts children’s body weight development. This review showcases how children are affected by food promotions, why companies even target children with their promotional efforts, and what makes children so susceptible to promotion of unhealthy food. In addition, this review discusses how regulations, parental styles, and individual media literacy skills can help to contain the potential detrimental effects of food promotions on children’s health. Recent Findings The recent findings indicate that children are affected by food promotions in their preference for unhealthy food and beverages in selection tasks shortly conducted after exposure. Furthermore, results indicate significant effects of food marketing, including enhanced attitudes, preferences, and increased consumption of marketed (predominantly unhealthy) foods connected with a wide range of marketing strategies. Children are particularly vulnerable to promotional efforts and react to it strongly due to their still developing cognitive and social skills as well as their lack in inhibitory control. Summary This review proposes an applied focus that discusses pathways for regulators, parents, and educators. In the light of the discussed results, a large number of studies on food promotion indicate that there is need to react. In all these measures, however, it is of relevance to consider children’s developmental stages to effectively counteract and respond to the potential detrimental effects of food promotions on children’s long-term weight development.

A Systematic Review Of Implicit Attitudes And Their Neural Correlates In Eating Behaviour

An increasing number of studies suggests that implicit attitudes toward food and body shape predict eating behaviour and characterize patients with eating disorders (EDs). However, literature has not been previously analysed, thus differences between patients with EDs and healthy controls and the level of automaticity of the processes involved in implicit attitudes are still matters of debate. The present systematic review aimed to synthetize current evidence from papers investigating implicit attitudes towards food and body in healthy and EDs populations. PubMed, EMBASE (Ovid), PsycINFO, Web of Science and Scopus were systematically screened and 183 studies using different indirect paradigms were included in the qualitative analysis. The majority of studies reported negative attitudes towards overweight/obese body images in healthy and EDs samples and weight bias as a diffuse stereotypical evaluation. Implicit food attitudes are consistently reported as valid predictors of eating behaviour. Few studies on the neurobiological correlates showed neurostimulation effects on implicit attitudes, but the automaticity at brain level of implicit evaluations remains an open area of research. In conclusion, implicit attitudes are relevant measures of eating behaviour in healthy and clinical settings, although evidence about their neural correlates is limited.

Relationship between Dietary Habits, Food Attitudes and Food Security Status among Adults Living within the United States Three Months Post-Mandated Quarantine: A Cross-Sectional Study

COVID-19 has disrupted the lives of many and may have influenced dietary habits through factors such as food security status and attitudes. The purpose of this study was to identify dietary habits and their associations with food insecurity and attitudes among adults living in the United States within three months post-mandated quarantine. An online cross-sectional study was conducted from April to June 2020. Participants (n = 3133) responded to a 71-item questionnaire regarding demographics (n = 7), health information (n = 5), lifestyle habits (n = 8), dietary habits (n = 37), food attitudes (n = 8), and food security status (n = 6). Frequency counts and percentages were tabulated, and multivariate linear regression was conducted to examine associations using STATA v14 at a statistical significance level of p < 0.05. Results showed that most participants indicated no change in dietary habits (43.6–87.4%), yet participants reported increased consumption of sweets (43.8%) and salty snacks (37.4%). A significant positive association for food attitude scores (1.59, 95% CI 1.48 to 1.70; p < 0.001) and food security scores (1.19, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.45; p < 0.001) on total dietary habit scores was found. Future extensive population studies are recommended to help public health authorities frame actions to alleviate the impact that mandated quarantine has on dietary habits.

The affective priming paradigm as an indirect measure of food attitudes and related choice behaviour

In this Registered Report, we assessed the utility of the affective priming paradigm (APP) as an indirect measure of food attitudes and related choice behaviour in two separate cohorts. Participants undertook a speeded evaluative categorization task in which target words were preceded by food primes that differed in terms of affective congruence with the target, explicit liking (most liked or least liked), and healthiness (healthy or unhealthy). Non-food priming effects were tested as a manipulation check, and the relationship between food priming effects and impulsive choice behaviour was also investigated using a binary food choice task. As predicted, priming effects were observed for both healthy and unhealthy foods, but there was no difference in the magnitude of these effects. This may suggest that the paradigm is most sensitive to affective, but not cognitive, components of attitudes (i.e., healthiness), but alternative theoretical explanations and implications of this finding are discussed. Food and non-food priming effects were observed in both reaction time (RT) and error rate (ER) data, but contrary to expectations, we found no association between food RT priming effects and choice behaviour. All findings from confirmatory analyses regarding RT and ER priming effects, and the absence of the expected correlations between priming effects and impulsive food choices, were successfully replicated in the online cohort of participants. Overall, this study confirms the robustness of the APP as an indirect measure of food liking and raises questions about its applied value for research of eating behaviours.