Search Results (20)

Background/Objectives: Appearance-related social media, such as “thinspiration” and “fitspiration” posts, have been shown to contribute to poor body image and disordered eating. Food-related social media is becoming increasingly popular; however, far less is known about its relationship to body image and disordered eating. Methods: The current review searched PsycNet and PubMed (Medline) for all the literature examining food-related social media and its relationship with body image and/or disordered eating outcomes. Results: From 796 initial hits, the search identified 16 relevant studies. The study designs and types of media examined varied widely, including mukbang videos, food blogs, and “What I Eat In A Day” videos. Findings on the relationship between food-related social media and outcome variables were quite mixed, perhaps speaking to the wide variety of media included in the review. Conclusions: The existing literature is sparce, but overall, it suggests a potential relationship between food-related social media, negative body image, and disordered eating. Additional experimental research is needed to clarify outcomes for different media types (e.g., food blogs versus mukbang videos) and to determine the direction of causality for each. Full article

Nutrition plays a key role in maintaining health and physical condition, particularly for active individuals, including athletes. It can therefore be assumed that individuals performing physically demanding tasks during the organization of sporting events, such as volunteers, should also pay attention to their nutrition. While the importance of diet for athletes has been widely studied, the impact of nutrition on sports volunteers remains under-researched. Volunteers often have to cope with varying degrees of physical and mental exertion, which may affect their nutritional needs. A qualitative study was conducted using in-depth individual interviews (IDIs) with 17 sports volunteers who had experience in organizing various sporting events. Participants were purposefully selected based on specific inclusion criteria, which included active involvement in sports volunteering (with a minimum of two years of experience in volunteer activities) as well as volunteering experience at sports events of various scales. The interviews aimed to understand the eating habits, dietary awareness, and impact of nutrition on health and physical fitness. The data were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis, focusing on coding responses and identifying recurring themes. Most participants did not place much importance on their diet, making random food choices due to a busy lifestyle and lack of time. Only a few volunteers consciously adjusted their diet when they had knowledge of the physically demanding tasks they were expected to perform during their volunteer work. The majority of volunteers relied on less reliable sources of nutritional information, such as blogs or social media, rather than credible sources of knowledge. This study revealed that many individuals involved in sports volunteering are unaware of the impact of diet on their fitness and health. There is a need for nutritional education for this group to improve their awareness of the importance of a balanced diet in the context of increased physical activity. It is also advisable to provide better nutritional conditions during sporting events and to promote the use of professional sources of information about healthy eating. Full article

Poor eating habits have been correlated with an increased probability of developing chronic health problems, including weight gain. In particular, dietary choices during the first years of life can have a lasting impact on dietary preferences and habits. Parents strongly influence the child’s relationship with food which will be maintained for the rest of their life; in particular, a greater sense of maternal self-efficacy is correlated with healthier eating habits and the child being less overweight. To date, there are few studies investigating the relationship between parental eating habits, self-efficacy in promoting healthy behaviors and the use of social media (SM). The general purpose of our study is to investigate the eating habits of families, food awareness and choices and the use of SM to search for pediatric nutrition content. The habits were collected through a questionnaire administered online on the most popular SM platforms. Data show that parents take care of their children’s food choices (96.1%) and rarely comply with their requests (77.9%). More than half read product labels (56.1%) and the origin (43.9%) before purchasing. Overall, 44.1% are influenced by TV and newspapers regarding their purchases, while 39.4% are influenced by the opinions of their friends and relatives. Food style correlates positively with the influence of TV and newspapers (r = 0.238) and the influence of friends and relatives (r = 0.231). Overall, 77.1% aim to follow a healthy diet, even if fish (24.5%) and vegetables (36.3%) are difficult to include in the child’s diet. Instagram (50.2%) and Facebook (36.3%) are the SM platforms most used to search for information on pediatric nutrition. Health professionals’ (60.3%) and institutions’ (24.9%) profiles are the most followed for reading articles and blogs (59.4%), but without direct interactions (78.9%). Only 20% are satisfied with the content found. Parental self-efficacy in promoting a healthy diet for their children correlates positively and moderately with encouragement to follow a healthy diet (r = 0.340) and control over the amount of snacks and sweets consumed (r = 0.302). The data demonstrate parents’ interest in using SM to search for information on pediatric nutrition but indicates that few (33.3%) are satisfied with what they find online. Therefore, future educational interventions need to be refined to help parents to better influence children’s eating habits. Full article

Recurrent foodborne outbreaks associated with low-moisture foods prompted this study to evaluate apple-handling practices presented in apple-drying recipes available to United States consumers, and to explore the food safety implications of the recipes. Because little research is available on the safety of home fruit-drying, we conducted a systematic search of English-language apple-drying recipes from YouTube videos, blog articles, cookbooks, and university extension sources. Our evaluation found that most recipes excluded handwashing instructions, and potential cross-contamination practices were evident in 12% of the videos. Bruised or damaged apples were selected for drying in 16% of the videos, two blogs, and five cookbook recipes. Although more than half the blogs and videos demonstrated pre-treatment procedures, they did so predominantly to minimize browning with almost no mention of antimicrobial benefits. Drying temperature information was missing in 41% of the videos and 35% of the cookbooks that we evaluated. Even when temperatures were mentioned, most were insufficient for pathogen reduction according to the recommendations of previous studies. These videos, blogs, and cookbooks commonly advocated subjective indicators instead of unit measurements when slicing apples and checking for doneness. Our findings reveal the need for drastic improvements in food safety information dissemination to home apple-dryers and recipe developers. Full article

Identification of emerging issues has garnered growing interest as a way to establish proactive policy formulation. However, in fisheries research, analyzing such issues has largely depended on the literature or researchers’ judgment. We use keyword analysis, targeting news application programming interfaces (News APIs) (72,981 news sources and blogs), to investigate issues in the global seafood industry from January 2019 to March 2022. Among a variety of topics identified by year and country, in general, seafood market function, health, and tariffs were the main issues in 2019, while COVID-19-related issues were primarily mentioned between 2020 and 2021. After 2022, the role of the market regained attention, and various new issues rose to the surface. To identify emerging issues, we jointly employ dynamic time warping (DTW) and growth models, which derive several keywords, including coercion, cuisines, food safety, ketones, plastic ingestions, seafood alcohol, urbanization, wastewater treatment, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). High interest in food safety, environmental change, trade conflict, and seafood value improvement reveal the need for proper policy responses. Full article

Social media platforms allow people to share information, connect, and build networks at an unprecedented scale with positive and negative consequences. Social network analysis (SNA) applies mathematical network and graph theory to visualise information transfer as relational networks of connected nodes. Measuring node connectivity (centrality) permits the identification of ‘influencers’. SNA has been applied to analyse the spread of misinformation on Twitter (1), but to date, no research has examined nutrition networks. Therefore, this study examined the #Nutrition conversations on Twitter utilising SNA and linguistic analyses. English language tweets including ‘#Nutrition’ on 1–21 March 2023 were collected using the SNA tool, NodeXL Pro (Network Overview for Discovery and Exploration in Excel) (2). SNA is a multistep process that calculates graph metrics and develops a network graph to measure the relationships between users. SNA also identifies semantically related words, hashtags, and word pairs and identifies the sentiment of words used, as measured against the Opinion Lexicon (2). The #Nutrition network included 17,129 vertices (users) with 26,809 unique edges (connections); edges with duplicates were merged. The network density was low, suggesting that most users communicate heavily with a small number of users. The average geodesic distance between any two users was 5.26, revealing a dispersed online discussion. SNA identified the top 10 influencers in this network, measured by high betweenness centrality (23,375,543–5,207,998). Influential users were from a mix of accounts including personal, online blogs, and government organisations. High betweenness centrality identified the users with the greatest influence, acting as bridges between network groups and therefore amplifying #Nutrition messages. Sentiment analysis found the discourse was more positive (0.047, 22,218 words) than negative (0.015, 6795 words). Semantic analysis calculated the total words, 468,191, and identified the most frequently used words in the tweets: #nutrition, #health, food, more, nutrition, health, #diet, #healthylifestlye, #fitness, and #food. Social network analysis shows the discourse on Twitter relating to #Nutrition is dispersed without clear polarising views. Semantic analysis showed that ‘health’ was the main topic discussed in relation to nutrition in this network and was most frequently associated with #Nutrition. The narrative was positively framed, as identified through sentiment analysis. Full article

In recent years, the emergence of the smart city concept has garnered attention as a promising innovation aimed at addressing the multifactorial challenges arising from the concurrent trends of urban population growth and the climate crisis. In this study, we delve into the multifaceted dimensions of the smart city paradigm to unveil its underlying structure, employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. To achieve this, we collected textual data from three sources: scientific publication abstracts, news blog posts, and social media entries. For the analysis of this textual data, we introduce an innovative semi-automated methodology that integrates topic modeling and thematic analysis. Our findings highlight the intricate nature of the smart city domain, which necessitates examination from three perspectives: applications, technology, and socio-economic perspective. Through our analysis, we identified ten distinct aspects of the smart city paradigm, encompassing mobility, energy, infrastructure, environment, IoT, data, business, planning and administration, security, and people. When comparing the outcomes across the three diverse datasets, we noted a relative lack of attention within the scientific community towards certain aspects, notably in the realm of business, as well as themes relevant to citizens’ everyday lives, such as food, shopping, and green spaces. This work reveals the underlying thematic structure of the smart city concept to help researchers, practitioners, and public administrators participate effectively in smart city transformation initiatives. Furthermore, it introduces a novel data-driven method for conducting thematic analysis on large text datasets. Full article

Generational theory assumes that generational cohorts develop similar attitudes and beliefs. The Generation Y/Millennials group is currently one of the most important generations in the market as they have a presence in the labour market with a high income of their own, which creates higher demand for products, especially in the food market which is very sensitive to consumer decisions. The aim of this study was to show the consumer behaviour of Generation Y in the market for innovative food products and to propose marketing models created on the basis of research on a Polish sample of Millennials. The research was conducted in the period before the COVID-19 pandemic on a group of 544 selected respondents. Descriptive statistics of the SPSS program were used to process the results obtained. Among the most important of the results was identifying the decision-makers who are purchasing innovative products and the influence of third parties on their decision. In the first instance, consumers look for innovative food products in large retail chains (hypermarkets and supermarkets), however, they pay attention to both the quality of the products on offer and the price. Values such as freshness and taste also play a role in their purchasing decisions. Sources of information about innovative products in the Polish food market include culinary blogs recommending innovative products, and the opinions of dieticians and nutritionists. Full article

Social media platforms are readily accessible sources of information about cooking, an activity deemed crucial for the improvement of a population’s diet. Previous research focused on the healthiness of the content shared on websites and blogs, but not on social media such as YouTube^®. This paper analysed the healthiness of 823 culinary recipes retrieved from 755 videos shared during a six-month period on ten popular Brazilian YouTube^® cooking channels. Recipes were categorized by type of preparation. To assess recipes’ healthiness, ingredients were classified according to the extension and purpose of industrial processing, in order to identify the use of ultra-processed foods. Additionally, a validated framework developed from criteria established in both editions of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population was employed. Recipes for cakes and baked goods, puddings, snacks and homemade fast foods, which were among the most frequently posted, contained the lowest proportion of unprocessed/minimally processed ingredients and the highest proportion of ultra-processed ingredients. Recipes containing whole cereals, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds were scarce. Results indicate that users should be critical about the quality of recipes shared on YouTube^® videos, also indicating a need for strategies aimed at informing individuals on how to choose healthier recipes or adapt them to become healthier. Full article

User-generated content on numerous sites is indicative of users’ sentiment towards many issues, from daily food intake to using new products. Amid the active usage of social networks and micro-blogs, notably during the COVID-19 pandemic, we may glean insights into any product or service through users’ feedback and opinions. Thus, it is often difficult and time consuming to go through all the reviews and analyse them in order to recognize the notion of the overall goodness or badness of the reviews before making any decision. To overcome this challenge, sentiment analysis has been used as an effective rapid way to automatically gauge consumers’ opinions. Large reviews will possibly encompass both positive and negative opinions on different features of a product/service in the same review. Therefore, this paper proposes an aspect-oriented sentiment classification using a combination of the prior knowledge topic model algorithm (SA-LDA), automatic labelling (SentiWordNet) and ensemble method (Stacking). The framework is evaluated using the dataset from different domains. The results have shown that the proposed SA-LDA outperformed the standard LDA. In addition, the suggested ensemble learning classifier has increased the accuracy of the classifier by more than ~3% when it is compared to baseline classification algorithms. The study concluded that the proposed approach is equally adaptable across multi-domain applications. Full article

One significant challenge to understanding the mechanisms of urban retail areas’ transition is limited data to trace a dynamic perspective of influential actors’ experience in an extended urban area. We overcome this gap by employing text mining to collect big text data from online blogs and propose a methodology to explore the dynamic spatial transformations and interactions across multiple adjacent retail areas. We study five retail areas that currently function as a major commercial hub in Seoul—the Hongdae area and its neighboring districts. We create co-occurrence networks of the text data to capture representative place images and user experiences. Our blog-word networks systematically capture the “invasion-succession” process in land-use transition during the commercialization of Hongdae’s neighboring districts. The process mirrors the history of spatial change in the areas, which once formed a small-scale, bohemian hip neighborhood that incubated indie culture and has now fully commercialized as a global tourist attraction. The commercial transition triggered by Hongdae’s cultural capital peaked with consumer experiences of “food and eating” dominating the whole area. Finally, the text networks signal gentrification in each commercial district near Hongdae, contributing to the current discourse on commercial gentrification by adding consumers’ perspectives. Full article

Social media influencers (SMI) are individuals with large follower engagement, who can shape the thoughts and dietary behaviours of their audience. Concerns exist surrounding the spread of dietary misinformation by SMI, which may impact negatively on public health, yet no standards currently exist to assess the credibility of their information. This study aimed to evaluate the credibility of key SMI weight management (WM) blogs (n = 9), piloting a pre-prepared credibility checklist. SMI were included if they had a blue-tick verification on ≥2 social media (SM) and an active WM blog. A sample of blog posts were systematically evaluated against thirteen credibility indicators under four themes: ‘transparency’, ‘use of other resources’, ‘trustworthiness and adherence to nutritional criteria’ and ‘bias’. Indicators were yes/no questions to determine an overall credibility percentage for each SMI. The ten most recent meal recipes from each blog were evaluated against Public Health England’s (PHE) calorie targets and the UK ‘traffic light’ food labelling scheme to assess nutritional quality. Percentages ranged from 23–85%, the highest gained by a Registered Nutritionist. SMI blogs may not be credible as WM resources. Given the popularity and impact of SM in the context of overweight, obesity and WM, this study may inform the methodological approach for future research. Full article

High meat consumption appears regularly in sustainability discourses but finding practical tools for reduction has proven to be challenging. The rise of social media has opened up new pathways to structure political spaces where grassroots initiatives for experiments can take place. Our paper examines how consumer-citizens started experimenting with vegetarian foods in the context of an innovative Finnish meat reduction social media campaign called Meatless October during its kick-off year in 2013. The focus is on participants’ perceptions of the campaign and reflections of the experiment process. We analyzed participants’ blog posts by using a qualitative content analysis. Our results show that the participants were often strongly motivated by the campaign’s sustainability frame. They also saw the campaign both as a communal challenge and an opportunity for political action, sharing know-how and experiences with the other participants. In everyday life, participants’ main focus and worry were in being able to prepare tasty and healthy vegetarian foods, and they were positively surprised by their ability to learn these skills. Participants typically attributed both success and failure in experimenting to their individual capabilities. Overall, our study suggests that the campaign’s public context pushed private practices towards change by facilitating the experimenting process. Full article

With rapid advancements in internet applications, the growth rate of recommendation systems for tourists has skyrocketed. This has generated an enormous amount of travel-based data in the form of reviews, blogs, and ratings. However, most recommendation systems only recommend the top-rated places. Along with the top-ranked places, we aim to discover places that are often ignored by tourists owing to lack of promotion or effective advertising, referred to as under-emphasized locations. In this study, we use all relevant data, such as travel blogs, ratings, and reviews, in order to obtain optimal recommendations. We also aim to discover the latent factors that need to be addressed, such as food, cleanliness, and opening hours, and recommend a tourist place based on user history data. In this study, we propose a cross mapping table approach based on the location’s popularity, ratings, latent topics, and sentiments. An objective function for recommendation optimization is formulated based on these mappings. The baseline algorithms are latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and support vector machine (SVM). Our results show that the combined features of LDA, SVM, ratings, and cross mappings are conducive to enhanced performance. The main motivation of this study was to help tourist industries to direct more attention towards designing effective promotional activities for under-emphasized locations. Full article

Food blogs are an increasingly popular source of information about food and nutrition. There is a perception that foods published on clean eating blogs, which promote unprocessed foods, are healthier than comparable foods without these claims. However, foods with these claims and their nutrient composition have not previously been evaluated. The purpose of the study was to describe the nutritional content of clean eating recipes compared to recipes without clean eating claims and the nutritional guidelines published by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Clean eating recipes were systematically selected from 13 popular clean eating blogs and were described and compared with control recipes without clean eating claims. The nutrient profiles from the included recipes were summarised and evaluated against criteria from WHO recommendations for chronic disease prevention and criteria from the U.K. Food Standards Agency. Data for 86 clean eating recipes were extracted that represented five food categories: breakfast, snacks, treats, desserts, and smoothies. These were matched with 86 control recipes without clean eating claims. The clean eating recipes, per portion, provide the equivalent of 15% of daily energy intake. The average serving sizes were not significantly different between clean eating and control recipes. Overall, the clean eating recipes contained significantly more protein (8.1 ± 7.3 g vs. 5.7 ± 4.1 g, p = 0.01), fat (15.8 ± 10.6 g vs. 12.4 ± 9.3 g, p = 0.03), and fibre (5.0 ± 4.3 g vs. 2.8 ± 2.9 g, p < 0.01) per serving than control recipes. There were no significant differences between clean eating and control recipes with respect to the energy (1280 ± 714 kJ vs. 1137 ± 600 kJ, p = 0.16), carbohydrate (31.5 ± 27.3 g vs. 33.9 ± 19.4 g, p = 0.51), sugar (21.1 ± 20.9 g vs. 23.2 ± 14.9 g, p = 0.46), and sodium content (196.7 ± 269 vs. 155.8 ± 160.8, p = 0.23). Less than 10% of clean eating and control recipes met the WHO constraints for proportions of energy from fat and sugar intake. A simulated nutrient profile of an average clean and control recipe shows that nutrients for both are similarly classified as moderate to high in fat, saturated fat, salt, and sugar. Foods with clean eating claims contained the same amount of energy, sugar, and sodium as foods without those claims. Clean eating claims are potentially misleading for consumers who may believe these foods are healthy alternatives, potentially undermining people’s efforts to eat a healthy diet. Full article