Books on the topic 'Food choice behaviours'

In the past two decades, public health interventions have moved from education strategies aimed at individuals to broad, multilevel interventions incorporating environmental and policy strategies to promote healthy food behaviors. These intervention programs continue to employ classic behavior change models that consider individuals as deliberate, intentional, and rational actors. Contrary to the ideas posited by rational choice theory, diet-related literature draws little correlation between an individual’s intentions and his/her resultant behavior. This chapter adds to the dual-system model of cognition—reflective or slow thinking, and automatic or fast thinking—and introduces an emerging theory for dietary behavior change called behavioral design. Behavioral design recognizes that human decisions and actions lie on a continuum between spheres and are continually shaped by the interactions between an agent (individual, group) and his/her/their exposure (environment). More specifically, behavioral design considers the importance of the “experience” left as time passes, such as conditioning, resilience, expectation, repeated behaviors, and normality, as the central and iterative influence on future decisions. Behavioral interventions must consider the individual’s “experience” resulting from his or her interaction with the environment, while acknowledging the fast and slow mechanisms by which choices are made. This chapter introduces aspects to consider when using behavioral design to increase healthier food behaviors and physical activity, and briefly discusses ethics questions related to intentional modification of environment for health behavior change.

Hearing and the sense of smell (olfaction) complement vision in gaining information about objects remote from the body. Hearing sensitivity in birds shows relatively little variation between species and sits well within the hearing capacities of young humans. Most birds have relatively poor ability to locate sounds in direction and distance. Only in owls does the accuracy of sound location match that of humans. A few highly specialized birds employ echolocation to orient themselves in the total darkness of caves. There is increasing evidence that olfaction is a key sense in birds guiding diverse behaviours across many species. Olfaction plays a key role in the location of profitable foraging locations at sea and on land, and in some species smell may be used to locate individual food items and nests. Olfaction may also play a role through semiochemicals in the recognition of species and individuals, and in mate choice.

Advice for pregnant women on food avoidance, dangerous exposures, and inappropriate behaviours abounds on the internet and through various information sources. This chapter reviews the evidence base for such advice and clarifies issues where common advice is not supported by credible data. Foods containing potential teratogens, mutagens, or toxicants that need consideration include liver (high vitamin A), some herbal teas, contaminated grains, predatory fish, caffeine-containing foods, and various sources of foodborne infections. Exposure to environmental toxicants such as lead, pesticides, herbicides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, bisphenol-A, and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals should be avoided, as should alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking. Restrictive diets and unusual dietary cravings (pica) need to be properly managed. Evidence for harm from personal care products is generally weak, but pregnant women may choose to avoid some unnecessary exposures.

With 92 percent of the water used by society for food-water, the behavior of consumers determines the demand for food and water. This chapter examines the extent to which global society can manage sustainably the water resources on which its food security depends. Many market players ensure the demand for food is met in supply chains that are embedded in the global food system, linking farmers, agri-industries that supply inputs, food traders, food manufacturers, and food retailers. Food-water risk highlights the importance of the food choices of consumers, as their wasteful practices squander volumes of water and energy along the food supply chains. It is important to recognize that food supply chains are often blind to the costs of blue and green water as an input and to the impacts of misallocating and mismanaging water. This chapter thus discusses the politics of food and the need to account for water.

Policy-level influences are impactful strategies to improve dietary behaviors, with the ability to strengthen food environments and with a broad population-level effect. Policies can alter the “choice architecture,” which may lead individuals to make healthier decisions by means of making the healthier option the default option. Policy levers such as taxation and regulation of businesses that influence the food environment are mechanisms through which positive change can be made. Specific legislation discussed in this chapter includes the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, the farm bill, and more recent proposals such as sugar-sweetened beverage taxation and labeling of genetically modified organisms. Finally, this chapter outlines ideas for how public health professionals can get involved and influence the political process.

Consumption defines the standard of living – whether food is hot or cold, whether walls are dry or damp. It is the stuff of desires and dreams. It signals superiority, but also community. It drives policy and vexes scholars. But consumption is not consummation. Its purpose recedes even as it is being realized. If insatiability is the vortex at the heart of consumption, there are also other problems. In standard economic theory, consumers rank preferences in the present, but the most significant choices arise not between two immediate substitutes (say coffee or tea), but between the present and the future. This article opens with some standard assumptions about the benefits of consumption, and competing ones about its futility. It discusses the findings of social and behavioural research on consumption and well-being, the link between happiness and wealth, relative income, habituation, materialism, history and culture, advertising, myopia, narcissism, and individualism.

Millions of people attempt to lose weight every year, but most will not succeed. Simply learning about a new diet and exercise plan is not enough. This book presents 25 detailed sessions of an empirically supported, cognitive-behavioral treatment package called acceptance-based behavioral treatment (ABT) that has now been utilized successfully in five large National Institute of Health–sponsored clinical trials. The foundation of this approach is comprised of the nutritional, physical activity, and behavioral components of the most successful, gold-standard behavioral weight loss packages, such as Look Ahead and the Diabetes Prevention Project. These components are synthesized with acceptance, willingness, behavioral commitment, motivation, and relapse prevention strategies drawn from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Relapse Prevention Therapy. ABT is premised on the idea that specialized self-control skills are necessary for weight control, given our innate desire to consume delicious foods and to conserve energy. These self-control skills revolve around a willingness to choose behaviors that may be perceived as uncomfortable for the sake of a more valuable objective. The treatment focuses on both weight loss and weight loss maintenance and aims to confer lifelong skills that facilitate long-term weight control. The companion Client Workbook contains summaries of session content, worksheets, handouts, and assignments.

Millions of people attempt to lose weight every year, but most will not succeed. Simply learning about a new diet and exercise plan is not enough. This book presents 25 detailed sessions of an empirically supported, cognitive-behavioral treatment package called acceptance-based behavioral treatment (ABT) that has now been utilized successfully in five large National Institute of Health–sponsored clinical trials. The foundation of this approach is comprised of the nutritional, physical activity, and behavioral components of the most successful, gold-standard behavioral weight loss packages, such as Look Ahead and the Diabetes Prevention Project. These components are synthesized with acceptance, willingness, behavioral commitment, motivation, and relapse prevention strategies drawn from acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy and relapse prevention therapy. ABT is premised on the idea that specialized self-control skills are necessary for weight control, given our innate desire to consume delicious foods and to conserve energy. These self-control skills revolve around a willingness to choose behaviors that may be perceived as uncomfortable for the sake of a more valuable objective. The treatment focuses on both weight loss and weight loss maintenance and aims to confer lifelong skills that facilitate long-term weight control. This companion Client Workbook contains summaries of session content, worksheets, handouts, and assignments.

Birds are intelligent, sociable creatures that exhibit a wide array of behaviours – from mobbing and mimicking to mating and joint nesting. Why do they behave as they do? Bringing to light the remarkable actions of birds through examples from species around the world, How Birds Behave presents engaging vignettes about the private lives of birds, all explained in an evolutionary context. We discover how birds find food, relying on foraging techniques, tools and thievery. We learn about the courtship rituals through which birds choose, compete for, woo and win mates; the familial conflicts that crop up among parents, offspring and siblings; and the stresses and strains of nesting, including territory defence, nepotism and relationship sabotage. We see how birds respond to threats and danger – through such unique practices as murmurations, specific alarm calls, distraction displays and antipredator nest design. We also read about how birds change certain behaviours – preening, migration, breeding and huddling – based on climate. Richly illustrated, this book explores the increasing focus on how individual birds differ in personality and how big data and citizen scientists are helping to add to what we know about them. Drawing on classic examples and the latest research, How Birds Behave offers a close-up look at the many ways birds conduct themselves in the wild.

Already in the early modern period, urban elites defined the city as a place of civilization and cultural progress in stark opposition to the brute nature and barbarism associated with the countryside. To what extent is it possible to generalize about the differences in material surroundings and daily life between city and country? Are these differences, where they exist, the result of different attitudes and behaviour with regard to consumption? These questions raise the issue of the relationship between home consumption and the degree to which households were integrated into the market, but they point also to the consumption choices and consumer preferences that can be seen in the probate inventories of material goods owned by urban and rural populations. In the contemporary imagination, crowded cities are opposed to a spacious countryside. In reality, dwelling was more complex in early modern Europe. This article compares home, possessions, and diet in city and country in Western Europe between 1600 and 1800, and considers urban and rural dress as well as food consumption in town and country.

Economy and mankind are inextricably interlinked. Just as the economy or the production of material wealth is unimaginable without a man, so human existence and development are impossible without the wealth created in the economy. Shortly, both the goal and the means of achieving and realization of the economy are still the human resources. People have long ago noticed that it was the economy that created livelihoods, and the delays in their production led to the catastrophic events such as hunger, poverty, civil wars, social upheavals, revolutions, moral degeneration, and more. Therefore, the special interest of people in understanding the regulatory framework of the functioning of the economy has existed and exists in all historical epochs [A. Sisvadze. Economic theory. Part One. 2006y. p. 22]. The system of economic disciplines studies economy or economic activities of a society. All of them are based on science, which is currently called economic theory in the post-socialist space (the science of economics, the principles of economics or modern economics), and in most countries of the world - predominantly in the Greek-Latin manner - economics. The title of the present book is also Modern Economics. Economics (economic theory) is the science that studies the efficient use of limited resources to produce and distribute goods and services in order to satisfy as much as possible the unlimited needs and demands of the society. More simply, economics is the science of choice and how society manages its limited resources. Moreover, it should be emphasized that economics (economic theory) studies only the distribution, exchange and consumption of the economic wealth (food, beverages, clothing, housing, machine tools, computers, services, etc.), the production of which is possible and limited. And the wealth that exists indefinitely: no economic relations are formed in the production and distribution of solar energy, air, and the like. This current book is the second complete updated edition of the challenges of the modern global economy in the context of the coronary crisis, taking into account some of the priority directions of the country's development. Its purpose is to help students and interested readers gain a thorough knowledge of economics and show them how this knowledge can be applied pragmatically (professionally) in professional activities or in everyday life. To achieve this goal, this textbook, which consists of two parts and tests, discusses in simple and clear language issues such as: the essence of economics as a science, reasons for origin, purpose, tasks, usefulness and functions; Basic principles, problems and peculiarities of economics in different economic systems; Needs and demand, the essence of economic resources, types and limitations; Interaction, mobility, interchangeability and efficient use of economic resources. The essence and types of wealth; The essence, types and models of the economic system; The interaction of households and firms in the market of resources and products; Market mechanism and its elements - demand, supply and price; Demand and supply elasticity; Production costs and the ways to reduce them; Forms of the market - perfect and incomplete competition markets and their peculiarities; Markets for Production Factors and factor incomes; The essence of macroeconomics, causes and importance of origin; The essence and calculation of key macroeconomic indicators (gross national product, gross domestic product, net national product, national income, etc.); Macroeconomic stability and instability, unemployment, inflation and anti-inflationary policies; State regulation of the economy and economic policy; Monetary and fiscal policy; Income and standard of living; Economic Growth; The Corona Pandemic as a Defect and Effect of Globalization; National Economic Problems and New Opportunities for Development in the conditions of the Coronary Crisis; The Socio-economic problems of moral obsolescence in digital technologies; Education and creativity are the main solution way to overcome the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus; Positive and negative effects of tourism in Georgia; Formation of the middle class as a contributing factor to the development of tourism in Georgia; Corporate culture in Georgian travel companies, etc. The axiomatic truth is that economics is the union of people in constant interaction. Given that the behavior of the economy reflects the behavior of the people who make up the economy, after clarifying the essence of the economy, we move on to the analysis of the four principles of individual decision-making. Furtermore, the book describes how people make independent decisions. The key to making an individual decision is that people have to choose from alternative options, that the value of any action is measured by the value of what must be given or what must be given up to get something, that the rational, smart people make decisions based on the comparison of the marginal costs and marginal returns (benefits), and that people behave accordingly to stimuli. Afterwards, the need for human interaction is then analyzed and substantiated. If a person is isolated, he will have to take care of his own food, clothes, shoes, his own house and so on. In the case of such a closed economy and universalization of labor, firstly, its productivity will be low and, secondly, it will be able to consume only what it produces. It is clear that human productivity will be higher and more profitable as a result of labor specialization and the opportunity to trade with others. Indeed, trade allows each person to specialize, to engage in the activities that are most successful, be it agriculture, sewing or construction, and to buy more diverse goods and services from others at a relatively lower price. The key to such human interactions is that trade is mutually beneficial; That markets are usually the good means of coordination between people and that the government can improve the results of market functioning if the market reveals weakness or the results of market functioning are not fair. Moroever, it also shows how the economy works as a whole. In particular, it is argued that productivity is a key determinant of living standards, that an increase in the money supply is a major source of inflation, and that one of the main impediments to avoiding inflation is the existence of an alternative between inflation and unemployment in the short term, that the inflation decrease causes the temporary decline in unemployement and vice versa. The Understanding creatively of all above mentioned issues, we think, will help the reader to develop market economy-appropriate thinking and rational economic-commercial-financial behaviors, to be more competitive in the domestic and international labor markets, and thus to ensure both their own prosperity and the functioning of the country's economy. How he/she copes with the tasks, it is up to the individual reader to decide. At the same time, we will receive all the smart useful advices with a sense of gratitude and will take it into account in the further work. We also would like to thank the editor and reviewers of the books. Finally, there are many things changing, so it is very important to realize that the XXI century has come: 1. The century of the new economy; 2. Age of Knowledge; 3. Age of Information and economic activities are changing in term of innovations. 1. Why is the 21st century the century of the new economy? Because for this period the economic resources, especially non-productive, non-recoverable ones (oil, natural gas, coal, etc.) are becoming increasingly limited. According to the World Energy Council, there are currently 43 years of gas and oil reserves left in the world (see “New Commersant 2007 # 2, p. 16). Under such conditions, sustainable growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) and maximum satisfaction of uncertain needs should be achieved not through the use of more land, labor and capital (extensification), but through more efficient use of available resources (intensification) or innovative economy. And economics, as it was said, is the science of finding the ways about the more effective usage of the limited resources. At the same time, with the sustainable growth and development of the economy, the present needs must be met in a way that does not deprive future generations of the opportunity to meet their needs; 2. Why is the 21st century the age of knowledge? Because in a modern economy, it is not land (natural resources), labor and capital that is crucial, but knowledge. Modern production, its factors and products are not time-consuming and capital-intensive, but science-intensive, knowledge-intensive. The good example of this is a Japanese enterprise (firm) where the production process is going on but people are almost invisible, also, the result of such production (Japanese product) is a miniature or a sample of how to get the maximum result at the lowest cost; 3. Why is the 21st century the age of information? Because the efficient functioning of the modern economy, the effective organization of the material and personal factors of production largely depend on the right governance decision. The right governance decision requires prompt and accurate information. Gone are the days when the main means of transport was a sailing ship, the main form of data processing was pencil and paper, and the main means of transmitting information was sending letters through a postman on horseback. By the modern transport infrastructure (highways, railways, ships, regular domestic and international flights, oil and gas pipelines, etc.), the movement of goods, services and labor resoucres has been significantly accelerated, while through the modern means of communication (mobile phone, internet, other) the information is spreading rapidly globally, which seems to have "shrunk" the world and made it a single large country. The Authors of the book: Ushangi Samadashvili, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University - Introduction, Chapters - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11,12, 15,16, 17.1,18 , Tests, Revaz Shengelia, Doctor of Economics, Professor of Georgian Technical University, Chapters_7, 8, 13. 14, 17.2, 17.4; Zhuzhuna Tsiklauri - Doctor of Economics, Professor of Georgian Technical University - Chapters 13.6, 13.7,17.2, 17.3, 18. We also thank the editor and reviewers of the book.