Advocacy in tight fiscal environment vital to reducing heart disease and stroke

 The American Heart Association has, for the first time, published a statement, "American Heart Association and Nonprofit Advocacy: Past, Present, and Future," that documents the association's longstanding commitment to improve heart and stroke-related public policy.

The paper, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, highlights the association's 2011 recommendations as lawmakers face difficult budget decisions, including the potential slashing for heart disease and stroke research and prevention initiatives. The statement illustrates the importance of patient-centered advocacy to support innovative research, quality care and prevention programs as America's greatest health threats continue to escalate.

"Public policy is a key component for improving the public's health because it addresses the overall environment of where people live, eat, work and receive health care," said Larry B. Goldstein, M.D., chair of the writing group and professor of medicine and director of the Duke Stroke Center at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

"It also addresses something many people aren't aware of — government funding for research on preventing and treating heart attacks, congestive heart failure, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases."

Key American Heart Association federal policy issues for 2011 include:

  • Advocating more funding for research for the National Institutes of Health and looking for new avenues for funding, such as the Department of Defense budget.
  • Endorsing reauthorization of the FIT Kids Act, which would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) to ensure that kids are active during the school day and stay healthy through diet and exercise.
  • Funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention programs.
  • Ensuring prevention-related provisions in health reform implementation.
  • Improved food labeling.
  • Robust nutrition standards for foods sold in schools and served in meals.
  • Providing input, including on cigarette pack warning labels, for the new FDA Regulation of Tobacco Law.

The 2011 state public policy priorities include:

  • Requiring quality physical education and health education in schools.
  • Requiring nutrition standards for competitive foods to ensure healthy foods are offered in schools.
  • Prohibiting trans fat in school and restaurant foods.
  • Promoting a healthy community environment including recreational spaces, walking/biking trails and increasing restaurant menu labeling with calorie, serving sizes and sodium information.
  • Supporting smoke-free workplaces, restaurants and bars.
  • Supporting significant increases in tobacco excise taxes and comprehensive tobacco control, prevention and treatment programs.
  • Funding heart disease and stroke prevention programs in state health departments.
  • Promoting public policies that ensure quality health care through adherence to evidence-based guidelines and treatment protocols.
  • Monitoring opportunities within states' health reform implementation as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including increasing insurance coverage for evidence-based preventive services.
  • Recommending CPR training as a requirement for high school graduation.
  • Developing coordinated systems of care for stroke, cardiac arrest and ST-elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI.
  • Eliminating healthcare disparities among races, ethnicities and genders, and improving health equity.

The association translates robust science into policy that provides a foundation for its legislative and regulatory advocacy activities.

"To achieve the American Heart Association's 2020 goal — to improve the cardiovascular health of all Americans by 20 percent while reducing deaths from cardiovascular diseases and stroke by 20 percent — we need to fight heart disease, congestive heart failure, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases on two fronts," said Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association.

"Helping individuals make healthier choices is one part of the equation. The other part is public policy at the federal, state and local level where we advocate for health-promoting environments where people can get physical activity safely, find healthy, affordable foods easily and receive quality healthcare."

Previous association advocacy efforts have led to measurable health successes, said Ralph Sacco, M.D., American Heart Association president. These include improvements in: smoking cessation; nutrition standards in schools; CPR training; Good Samaritan laws; and placement of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in public places.

"Advocacy around smoking cessation and prevention has been an American Heart Association/ American Stroke Association priority for several decades and is a remarkable example of the impact advocacy can have on reducing cardiovascular diseases and stroke in the United States," Sacco said. "Efforts by the association have contributed to a more than 25 percent decline in deaths from cardiac disease and stroke and a decline in U.S. cigarette consumption by more than 24 percent over the last decade. Despite this progress, 23.1 percent of men and 18.3 percent of women in the U.S. still smoke. This is why we need to remain vigilant in keeping this and other issues regarding achieving ideal cardiovascular health on the front burner."


Journal Reference:

  1. Larry B. Goldstein et al. American Heart Association and Nonprofit Advocacy: Past, Present, and Future: A Policy Recommendation From the American Heart Association. Circulation, 2011; DOI: 10.1161/CIR.0b013e31820a5528

Reducing diet early in pregnancy stunts fetal brain development, study finds

Eating less during early pregnancy impaired fetal brain development in a nonhuman primate model, researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio report.

The researchers found decreased formation of cell-to-cell connections, cell division and amounts of growth factors in the fetuses of mothers fed a reduced diet during the first half of pregnancy. "This is a critical time window when many of the neurons as well as the supporting cells in the brain are born," said Peter Nathanielsz, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Research in the Health Science Center School of Medicine.

The study included collaborators at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in San Antonio and Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. The team compared two groups of baboon mothers located at SFBR's Southwest National Primate Research Center. One group ate as much as they wanted during the first half of pregnancy while the other group was fed 30 percent less, a level of nutrition similar to what many prospective mothers in the U.S. experience.

Hundreds of genes involved

"Our collaboration allowed us to determine that the nutritional environment impacts the fetal brain at both the cellular and molecular levels," said SFBR's Laura Cox, Ph.D. "That is, we found dysregulation of hundreds of genes, many of which are known to be key regulators in cell growth and development, indicating that nutrition plays a major role during fetal development by regulating the basic cellular machinery."

Moderate versus severe reduction

It is known that marked nutrient restriction, such as in famine conditions, adversely affects development of the fetal brain. Senior author Thomas McDonald, Ph.D., also of the Health Science Center, said the study "is the first demonstration of major effects caused by the levels of food insecurity that occur in sections of U.S. society and demonstrates the vulnerability of the fetus to moderate reduction in nutrients."

Dr. Nathanielsz noted:

  • In teenage pregnancy, the developing fetus is deprived of nutrients by the needs of the growing mother;
  • In pregnancies late in reproductive life, a woman's arteries are stiffer and the blood supply to the uterus decreases, inevitably affecting nutrient delivery to the fetus;
  • Diseases such as preeclampsia or high blood pressure in pregnancy can lead to decreased function of the placenta with decreased delivery of nutrients to the fetus.

'Lifetime effects'

"This study is a further demonstration of the importance of good maternal health and diet," Dr. McDonald said. "It supports the view that poor diets in pregnancy can alter development of fetal organs, in this case the brain, in ways that will have lifetime effects on offspring, potentially lowering IQ and predisposing to behavioral problems."

Developmental programming of lifetime health has been shown to play a role in later development of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. In light of this new finding, research should focus on effects of developmental programming in the context of autism, depression, schizophrenia and other brain disorders.

Mother's protection

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also forces researchers to review the commonly held notion that during pregnancy the mother is able to protect the fetus from dietary challenges such as poor nutrition, Dr. McDonald said.

The nonhuman primate model's brain developmental stages are very close to those of human fetuses, the researchers noted. Most previous research in this area was conducted in rats.

Protective properties of green tea uncovered

 Regularly drinking green tea could protect the brain against developing Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, according to latest research by scientists at Newcastle University.

The study, published in the academic journal Phytomedicine, also suggests this ancient Chinese remedy could play a vital role in protecting the body against cancer.

Led by Dr Ed Okello, the Newcastle team wanted to know if the protective properties of green tea — which have previously been shown to be present in the undigested, freshly brewed form of the drink — were still active once the tea had been digested.

Digestion is a vital process which provides our bodies with the nutrients we need to survive. But, says Dr Okello, it also means that just because the food we put into our mouths is generally accepted to contain health-boosting properties, we can't assume these compounds will ever be absorbed by the body.

"What was really exciting about this study was that we found when green tea is digested by enzymes in the gut, the resulting chemicals are actually more effective against key triggers of Alzheimer's development than the undigested form of the tea," explains Dr Okello, based in the School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development at Newcastle University.

"In addition to this, we also found the digested compounds had anti-cancer properties, significantly slowing down the growth of the tumour cells which we were using in our experiments."

As part of the research, the Newcastle team worked in collaboration with Dr Gordon McDougall of the Plant Products and Food Quality Group at the Scottish Crop Research Institute in Dundee, who developed technology which simulates the human digestive system.

It is this which made it possible for the team to analyse the protective properties of the products of digestion.

Two compounds are known to play a significant role in the development of Alzheimer's disease — hydrogen peroxide and a protein known as beta-amyloid.

Previous studies have shown that compounds known as polyphenols, present in black and green tea, possess neuroprotective properties, binding with the toxic compounds and protecting the brain cells.

When ingested, the polyphenols are broken down to produce a mix of compounds and it was these the Newcastle team tested in their latest research.

"It's one of the reasons why we have to be so careful when we make claims about the health benefits of various foods and supplements," explains Dr Okello.

"There are certain chemicals we know to be beneficial and we can identify foods which are rich in them but what happens during the digestion process is crucial to whether these foods are actually doing us any good."

Carrying out the experiments in the lab using a tumour cell model, they exposed the cells to varying concentrations of the different toxins and the digested green tea compounds.

Dr Okello explained: "The digested chemicals protected the cells, preventing the toxins from destroying the cells.

"We also saw them affecting the cancer cells, significantly slowing down their growth.

"Green tea has been used in Traditional Chinese medicine for centuries and what we have here provides the scientific evidence why it may be effective against some of the key diseases we face today."

The next step is to discover whether the beneficial compounds are produced during digestion after healthy human volunteers consume tea polyphenols. The team has already received funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to take this forward.

Dr Okello adds: "There are obviously many factors which together have an influence on diseases such as cancer and dementia — a good diet, plenty of exercise and a healthy lifestyle are all important."


Journal Reference:

  1. E.J. Okello, G.J. McDougall, S. Kumar, C.J. Seal. In vitro protective effects of colon-available extract of Camellia sinensis (tea) against hydrogen peroxide and beta-amyloid (Aβ(1–42)) induced cytotoxicity in differentiated PC12 cells. Phytomedicine, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.phymed.2010.11.004

Mothers' diets have biggest influence on children eating healthy, study suggests

As health professionals search for ways to combat the rise in obesity and promote healthy eating, new research reveals a mother's own eating habits — and whether she views her child as a 'picky eater' — has a huge impact on whether her child consumes enough fruits and vegetables.

A study by professor Mildred Horodynski of Michigan State University's College of Nursing looked at nearly 400 low-income women (black and non-Hispanic white) with children ages 1-3 enrolled in Early Head Start programs. Results show toddlers were less likely to consume fruits and vegetables four or more times a week if their mothers did not consume that amount or if their mothers viewed their children as picky eaters.

"What and how mothers eat is the most direct influence on what toddlers eat," Horodynski said. "Health professionals need to consider this when developing strategies to increase a child's consumption of healthy foods. Diets low in fruit and vegetables even at young ages pose increased risks for chronic diseases later in life."

The research was published recently in the journal Public Health Nursing.

When mothers viewed their children as picky eaters — unwilling to try nonfamiliar foods — a decrease also was seen in the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed.

"Perceptions of a toddler as a picky eater may be related to parenting style or culture," Horodynski said. "Mothers who viewed their children as picky eaters may be more lax in encouraging the consumption of fruits and vegetables."

Previous research shows that early repeated exposure to different types of foods is needed; up to 15 exposures may be needed before it can be determined if a child likes or dislikes a food.

Horodynski's study, which collected information from mothers from 28 Michigan counties, also revealed differences among race: Black mothers and toddlers did not consume as much fruits and vegetables as non-Hispanic whites, though a majority of all study subjects fell below recommended U.S. dietary guidelines.

"Special attention must be given to family-based approaches to incorporating fruits and vegetables into daily eating habits," she said. "Efforts to increase mothers' fruit and vegetable intake would result in more positive role modeling."

In addition, Horodynski said, public health nurses and other health professionals must play an important role in enhancing mothers' awareness of the importance of health eating.

"Mother needs to have the knowledge and confidence to make these healthy decisions for their children," she said.


Journal Reference:

  1. Mildred A. Horodynski, Manfred Stommel, Holly Brophy-Herb, Yan Xie, Lorraine Weatherspoon. Populations at Risk Across the Lifespan: Case Studies: Low-Income African American and Non-Hispanic White Mothers' Self-Efficacy, “Picky Eater” Perception, and Toddler Fruit and Vegetable Consumption. Public Health Nursing, 2010; 27 (5): 408 DOI: 10.1111/j.1525-1446.2010.00873.x

Fast food and sweets advertised when children watch television

Children in Sweden are exposed to a huge number of TV advertisements. Food adverts — primarily for fast food and sweets — dominate the advertisements shown during children's viewing times. Research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that Sweden is no different from other countries when it comes to the number of adverts that children are exposed to.

Children between the age of three and 12 in Sweden encounter an average of 50 or so TV advertisements for food a week, dominated (in descending order) by fast food, alcohol, chocolate and sweets. The results were presented recently in an article by 13 research groups in different countries in the American Journal of Public Health.

The link between food and advertising

There is a link between food advertising and the food choices that children make. 10% of schoolchildren worldwide and 22 million children under the age of five are overweight or obese. Children of this age in Sweden watch around 100 minutes of television a day, two thirds of which involves commercial channels. The most popular channels with children are TV3, TV4 and Kanal 5, all of which were monitored by researchers as part of the international study.

11 countries

"Although Sweden is seen as a progressive country because we've passed legislation that limits television advertising targeting children, they still get a lot of exposure to food adverts," says Hillevi Prell at the University of Gothenburg's Department of Food and Nutrition, and Sport Science.

Sweden over the average

The Swedish researchers studied almost 200 hours of television programming on the three channels, and classified all adverts between 6 am and 10 pm on two weekdays and two weekend days. Children's most popular viewing hours — when fast food, alcohol, chocolate and sweets dominated the food advertisements — were between 7 and 10 pm on weekdays, and 7 and 10 am and 5 and 10 pm at weekends.

13 groups of researchers in 11 countries monitored food advertising during peak viewing periods for children. Across the study, 18% of adverts were for food, with food advertisements shown an average of five times an hour. Sweden was slightly above this average with six food adverts an hour.

Empty calories

"Given that older children spend far longer in front of the telly, and that a high proportion of adverts are for empty calories, the marketing of less healthy foods needs to be looked at," says Christina Berg, docent at the Department of Food and Nutrition, and Sport Science.


Journal Reference:

  1. B. Kelly, J. C. G. Halford, E. J. Boyland, K. Chapman, I. Bautista-Castano, C. Berg, M. Caroli, B. Cook, J. G. Coutinho, T. Effertz, E. Grammatikaki, K. Keller, R. Leung, Y. Manios, R. Monteiro, C. Pedley, H. Prell, K. Raine, E. Recine, L. Serra-Majem, S. Singh, C. Summerbell. Television Food Advertising to Children: A Global Perspective. American Journal of Public Health, 2010; 100 (9): 1730 DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2009.179267

Many brain tumor patients use homeopathy, alternative treatments

 Many people with incurable brain tumors use alternative therapies, such as taking vitamins and homeopathy, in addition to their conventional treatments, according to a study published in the December 14, 2010, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

About 40 percent of brain tumor patients in the study used alternative therapies including homeopathic remedies, vitamin supplements and psychological therapy.

"The use of these alternative treatments may be largely overlooked and underestimated," said study author Oliver Heese, MD, and neurosurgeon with the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. "Doctors need to be aware of patients' desire to seek alternative treatments and encourage an open discussion of options. Their guidance may be much appreciated, especially when some treatments are dubious, expensive or potentially harmful."

The study involved 621 people with incurable grade II to grade IV gliomas who completed questionnaires about their use of alternative therapies. Alternative therapy was defined as methods or compounds not used in routine clinical practice and not scientifically evaluated.

Younger people, women, and those with more education were more likely to use alternative treatments than older people, men and those with less education.

"The majority of people are turning to alternative treatments not because they are dissatisfied with their conventional care, but because they wish to add something beneficial to their care," Heese said.

From a list of reasons for using alternative treatments, the most commonly chosen responses were "to support conventional therapy," "to build up body resistance" and "to do something for the treatment by myself." The least commonly chosen responses were "because I am afraid of the conventional methods" and "because the physicians don't have enough time."

Of those who used alternative treatments, 39 percent used homeopathy, 31 percent used vitamin supplements and 29 percent used various psychological methods.

The study was conducted by the German Glioma Network, supported by the German Cancer Aid.

Thought for food: Imagining food consumption reduces actual consumption

If you're looking to lose weight, it's okay to think about eating your favorite candy bar. In fact, go ahead and imagine devouring every last bite — all in the name of your diet.

A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, published in Science, shows that when you imagine eating a certain food, it reduces your actual consumption of that food. This landmark discovery changes the decades-old assumption that thinking about something desirable increases cravings for it and its consumption.

Drawing on research that shows that perception and mental imagery engages neural machinery in a similar fashion and similarly affect emotions, response tendencies and skilled motor behavior, the CMU research team tested the effects of repeatedly imagining the consumption of a food on its actual consumption. They found that simply imagining the consumption of a food decreases ones appetite for it.

"These findings suggest that trying to suppress one's thoughts of desired foods in order to curb cravings for those foods is a fundamentally flawed strategy," said Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor of social and decision sciences and lead author of this study. "Our studies found that instead, people who repeatedly imagined the consumption of a morsel of food — such as an M&M or cube of cheese — subsequently consumed less of that food than did people who imagined consuming the food a few times or performed a different but similarly engaging task. We think these findings will help develop future interventions to reduce cravings for things such as unhealthy food, drugs and cigarettes, and hope they will help us learn how to help people make healthier food choices."

For the study, the research team, which included Young Eun Huh, Tepper School of Business Ph.D. candidate, and Joachim Vosgerau, assistant professor of marketing, ran a series of five experiments that tested whether mentally stimulating the consumption of a food reduces its subsequent actual consumption. In the first experiment, participants imagined performing 33 repetitive actions, one at a time. A control group imagined inserting 33 quarters into a laundry machine (an action similar to eating M&M's). Another group imagined inserting 30 quarters into a laundry machine and then imagined eating 3 M&M'S, while a third group imagined inserting three quarters into a laundry machine and then imagined eating 30 M&M'S. Next, all participants ate freely from a bowl filled with M&M'S. Participants who imagined eating 30 M&M'S actually ate significantly fewer M&M'S than did participants in the other two groups.

To ensure that the results were due to imagined consumption of M&M'S rather than the control task, the next experiment manipulated the experience imagined (inserting quarters or eating M&M'S) and the number of times it was imagined. Again, the participants who imagined eating 30 M&M'S subsequently consumed fewer M&M'S than did the participants in the other groups.

The last three experiments showed that the reduction in actual consumption following imagined consumption was due to habituation — a gradual reduction in motivation to eat more of the food — rather than alternative psychological processes such as priming or a change in the perception of the food's taste. Specifically, the experiments demonstrated that only imagining the consumption of the food reduced actual consumption of the food. Merely thinking about the food repeatedly or imaging the consumption of a different food did not significantly influence the actual consumption of the food that participants were given.

"Habituation is one of the fundamental processes that determine how much we consume of a food or a product, when to stop consuming it, and when to switch to consuming another food or product," Vosgerau said. "Our findings show that habituation is not only governed by the sensory inputs of sight, smell, sound and touch, but also by how the consumption experience is mentally represented. To some extent, merely imagining an experience is a substitute for actual experience. The difference between imagining and experiencing may be smaller than previously assumed."

Other implications of this research include the discovery that mental imagery can enact habituation in the absence of pre-ingestive sensory stimulation and that repeatedly stimulating an action can trigger its behavioral consequences.


Journal Reference:

  1. Carey K. Morewedge, Young Eun Huh and Joachim Vosgerau. Thought for Food: Imagined Consumption Reduces Actual Consumption. Science, 10 December 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6010 pp. 1530-1533 DOI: 10.1126/science.1195701

Do our bodies' bacteria play matchmaker?

— Could the bacteria that we carry in our bodies decide who we marry? According to a new study from Tel Aviv University, the answer lies in the gut of a small fruit fly.

Prof. Eugene Rosenberg, Prof. Daniel Segel and doctoral student Gil Sharon of Tel Aviv University's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology recently demonstrated that the symbiotic bacteria inside a fruit fly greatly influence its choice of mates.

The research was done in cooperation with Prof. John Ringo of the University of Maine, and was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Love, marriage and fruit flies

Based on a theory developed by Prof. Rosenberg and Dr. Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg, the scientists propose that the basic unit of natural selection is not the individual living organism, plant or animal, but rather a larger biological milieu called a holobiont. This milieu can include plant or animal life as well as their symbiotic partners. In the case of animals, these partners tend to be microorganisms like intestinal bacteria.

"Up to now, it was assumed that the host organism undergoes evolution on its own, while its symbiotic bacteria undergo their own evolution," Prof. Rosenberg says. "The mechanism that we discovered enables evolution to occur more rapidly in response to environmental changes. Since a generation is shorter for bacteria than for multicellular organisms, they genetically adjust more quickly to changes in the holobiont," says Prof. Rosenberg.

Conducting their experiments on the rapidly-reproducing fruit fly, the scientists were able to test this new theory. The first experiment repeated a study carried out two decades ago by a Yale University researcher, in which a fly population was divided in half and fed different diets — malt sugar versus starch. A year later, when the flies were re-integrated as one group, those who had been fed starch preferred starch-fed mates, while the sugar-fed flies preferred mates of a similar nutritional background. The repeat experiment carried out by the Tel Aviv University researchers shows that this dietary influence takes effect within just a generation or two rather than over an entire year.

In their second experiment, the Tel Aviv University team repeated the first, but with the addition of an antibiotic, which killed the bacteria and eliminated the specific mate preference. The mating process became random, with no dietary influence.

In subsequent experiments, the researchers successfully isolated the bacterial species responsible for reproductive isolation in flies with diet-related mating preferences, and found the bacteria Lactobacillus plantarum to be present in greater numbers in starch-fed fruit flies than in sugar-fed flies. When L. plantarum was reintroduced into the antibiotic-treated flies, the preferential mating behavior resumed — proving that this bacterial species is at least partly responsible for the mating preference.

Rewriting Darwin?

Finally, in cooperation with Prof. Avraham Hefetz of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology, the team analyzed the sexual pheromones produced by the fruit flies. There turned out to be differences in pheromone levels between the two groups of flies — differences that again disappeared after administering antibiotics.

"The finding indicates that pheromone alterations are a mechanism by which we can identify mating preferences. We therefore hypothesize that it is the bacteria that are driving this change," Prof. Rosenberg says. He adds that these discoveries have implications for our entire understanding of natural selection — something which may even lead to the development of a new theory of evolution.


Journal Reference:

  1. G. Sharon, D. Segal, J. M. Ringo, A. Hefetz, I. Zilber-Rosenberg, E. Rosenberg. Commensal bacteria play a role in mating preference of Drosophila melanogaster. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009906107

Why the road to health is paved with, often unrealised, good intentions

We regularly hear how the best of intentions do not translate into action. This is nowhere more apparent than in the case of healthy eating, where many fall through the gap between intention and action. Research is ongoing at Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown, and University College Cork to try to decipher this intention-behaviour gap in relation to healthy eating.

This will give a better understanding of consumer behaviour in the area of health and nutrition. "This understanding addresses a very important objective for national policy makers as well as for the food industry in Ireland and the EU," explains Dr Sinéad McCarthy, Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown.

The study, featured in an article in Teagasc's science magazine TResearch, found that people who plan ahead are more likely to successfully carry out their good intentions compared to those who do not form plans. "Furthermore, individuals need to appraise and monitor their goal striving activities in order to realise their good intentions. This has a feedback mechanism with behaviour. Control and coping mechanisms are essential to maintain effort and good behaviour when faced with obstacles and temptation. These observations reinforce the view that maintaining healthy weight in an obesogenic environment requires more than instinct, it also requires a conscious effort," says Dr McCarthy.

"The findings from this research are in keeping with evidence presented within the research literature and one can conclude that planning, monitoring activities, and coping/self-control are three important features in the transitional space between behavioural intention and behavioural action. A deep understanding of these concepts is undoubtedly important when attempting to facilitate health behaviour change efforts. These three concepts should be considered and addressed as the food industry endeavours to make the healthy choice the easy choice for consumers," explains Dr McCarthy.

Guiltless gluttony: Misleading size labels lead to overeating

People are easily fooled when it comes to food labels, and will eat more of something if they believe it's a "small" portion, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors Nilufer Z. Ayinoglu (Koç University, Istanbul) and Aradhna Krishna (University of Michigan) found that inconsistent portion sizes contribute to people's uncertainty about the appropriate amount to eat. "In this context of large portion sizes and consumer uncertainty about appropriate food intake, we show that size labels chosen by food and drink vendors (such as 'small-medium-large') can have a major impact on consumers' purchase and consumption behavior," the authors write. "As such, food providers' choice of size labels has many potential legislative and liability-related implications."

The researchers conducted five studies that included actual food consumption. They demonstrated that the use of different size labels for the same product affects the amount people consume.

When people consumed a large item that was labeled "small," they felt less guilty; the authors call this effect "guiltless gluttony." "An implication of our results is that consumers can continue to eat large sizes that are labeled as smaller and feel that they have not consumed too much. This can result in unintended and uninformed over-consumption, which is clearly ridden with significant health ramifications, and size labels could be contributing to the rampant obesity problems in the United States."

The authors found that the biasing effect of size labels was most pronounced when people's concern about accurate nutrition intake was not high and when people's ability to process was limited — in other words, situations not unlike everyday life.

"Stricter size labeling laws and more vigilant monitoring of marketers' use of size labels may be needed, especially considering the limited cognitive resources available to consumers for routine food choice and consumption behavior during their other everyday endeavors," the authors conclude.


Journal Reference:

  1. Nilufer Ayinoglu and Aradhna Krishna. Guiltless Gluttony: The Asymmetric Effect of Size Labels on Size Perceptions and Consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, April 2011 DOI: 10.1086/657557