Analysis of residents’ food safety satisfaction from the perspective of income heterogeneity

Food is the paramount necessity of the people, while food safety is the priority. Facing the increasingly serious food safety problems in China, how to improve food safety has become the responsibility of the whole society, and also the obligation of social development. Based on the 8000 residents’ survey data, the ordinal logistic model was used to analyze the residents’ satisfaction with food safety. The results show that residents are generally worried about food safety, and there is a strong demand for safe food. Gender, age, educational background, supervision, publicity, and complaint handling significantly affect residents’ food safety satisfaction. In terms of income heterogeneity, low-income residents have the highest degree of satisfaction with food safety. With the improvement of income level, their degree of satisfaction is decreasing. The high-income class residents have a strong consciousness of rights safeguarding after purchasing unsafe food. For low-income residents, their awareness of rights protection is declining due to insufficient income. In the way of rights protection, most respondents choose to return or refund money after negotiation with the seller. The lack of punishment for unscrupulous sellers is one of the main reasons for the frequent occurrence of food safety problems in China.

Genetic Polymorphisms, Adherence to Mediterranean Diet and Microbiota-Associated Urolithin Metabotypes: A Complex Cocktail to Predict the Obesity in Childhood-Adolescence

Environmental and genetic factors are associated with pandemic obesity since childhood. However, the association of overweight-obesity with these factors, acting as a consortium, has been scarcely studied in children. We aimed here to assess the probabilities of being overweighed-obese in a randomly recruited cohort of Spanish children and adolescents (n=415, 5–17 years-old) by estimating the odds ratios for different predictor variables, and their relative importance in the prediction. The predictor variables were ethnicity, age, sex, adherence to the Mediterranean diet (KIDMED), physical activity, urolithin metabotypes (UM-A, UM-B and UM-0) as biomarkers of the gut microbiota, and 53 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 43 genes mainly related to obesity and cardiometabolic diseases. A proportional-odds logistic ordinal regression, validated through bootstrap, was used to model the data. While every variable was not independently associated with overweight-obesity, however, the ordinal logistic model revealed that overweight-obesity prevalence was related to being a young boy with either UM-B or UM-0, low KIDMED score and high contribution of a consortium of 24 SNPs, being rs1801253-ADRB1, rs4343-ACE, rs8061518-FTO, rs1130864-CRP, rs659366-UCP2, rs6131-SELP, rs12535708-LEP, rs1501299-ADIPOQ, rs708272-CETP and rs2241766-ADIPOQ the top-ten contributing SNPs. Additional research should confirm and complete this model by including dietary interventions and the individuals’ gut microbiota composition.

Relationship Between Perceived In-Cabin Air Quality and Truck Drivers' Self-Reported Health and Alertness

This study surveyed 253 truck drivers and found that many drivers scored poorly on the Stanford and Epworth sleepiness scales indicating that they may not be as alert as they should be while driving. Moreover, those who rated the air in their truck cabins as fresh reported less irritation to their eyes, noses, throats, and skin, scored better in both sleepiness scales, and reported fewer sleep-related medical symptoms. Finally, the results of the ordinal logistic model indicate that drivers' perceptions of the air quality in their truck cabins are significantly related to their alertness during a trip.