Thinking of food: The mental representation of healthy foods as unprepared.

We find that people implicitly and explicitly represent healthy foods they categorize as healthy in their purest, least prepared forms but represent foods they categorize as unhealthy in their most prepared forms (e.g., a veggie patty is represented as frozen while a beef burger is represented in a bun with melted cheese and ready to eat).

Psychosocial context and food healthiness in top-grossing American films.

Objective: Healthy eating is shaped by the context. To understand how healthy eating is modeled in popular media, this systematic analysis quantified which contextual factors, character behaviors, and character demographics were associated with food healthiness in popular movies.

Method: Two researchers content-coded the contextual factors, character behaviors, and character demographics depicted across 9,093 foods in 244 top-grossing Hollywood movies released from 1994-2018.

Emphasizing appeal over health promotes preference for nutritious foods in people of low socioeconomic status.

People of low socioeconomic status (SES) have disproportionately poorer dietary health despite efforts to improve access and highlight the health benefits of nutritious foods. While health-focused labels and advertisements make healthier options easier to recognize, they can prime a number of negative associations about healthy foods (e.g.

Language in popular American culture constructs the meaning of healthy and unhealthy eating: Narratives of craveability, excitement, and social connection in movies, television, social media, recipes, and food reviews.

Many people want to eat healthier but struggle to do so, in part due to a dominant perception that healthy foods are at odds with hedonic goals. Is the perception that healthy foods are less appealing than unhealthy foods represented in language across popular entertainment media and social media? Six studies analyzed dialogue about food in six cultural products - creations of a culture that reflect its perspectives - including movies, television, social media posts, food recipes, and food reviews. In Study 1 (N = 617 movies) and Study 2 (N = 27 television shows), healthy foods were described with fewer appealing descriptions (e.

Nutritional Analysis of Foods and Beverages Posted in Social Media Accounts of Highly Followed Celebrities.

Importance: Celebrity social media posts engage millions of young followers daily, but the nutritional quality of foods and beverages in such posts, sponsored and unsponsored, is unknown.

Objective: To quantify the nutritional quality of foods and beverages depicted in social media accounts of highly followed celebrities and assess whether nutritional quality is associated with post sponsorship, celebrity profession or gender, and followers' likes and comments.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study analyzed the content of food- and beverage-containing posts from Instagram (a photo- and video-sharing social media platform) accounts of 181 highly followed athletes, actors, actresses, television personalities, and music artists.

Can Exercising and Eating Healthy Be Fun and Indulgent Instead of Boring and Depriving? Targeting Mindsets About the Process of Engaging in Healthy Behaviors.

This paper investigates mindsets about the process of health behaviors-the extent to which people associate physical activity and healthy eating with appealing (pleasurable, fun, indulgent) versus unappealing (unpleasant, boring, depriving) qualities-to promote greater engagement. Study 1 ( = 536) examined how mindsets about physical activity and healthy eating relate to current and future health behavior. Study 2 ( = 149) intervened in actual fitness classes to compare the effects of brief appeal-focused and health-focused interventions on mindsets about physical activity and class engagement.

Nutritional Analysis of Foods and Beverages Depicted in Top-Grossing US Movies, 1994-2018.

Importance: Many countries now restrict advertisements for unhealthy foods. However, movies depict foods and beverages with nutritional quality that is unknown, unregulated, and underappreciated as a source of dietary influence.

Objective: To compare nutritional content depicted in top-grossing US movies with established nutrition rating systems, dietary recommendations, and US individuals' actual consumption.

Five-star prices, appealing healthy item descriptions? Expensive restaurants' descriptive menu language.

Prior research shows that America's top-selling inexpensive casual dining restaurants use less appealing language to describe healthy menu items than standard items. This may suggest to diners that healthy options are less tasty and enjoyable. The present research asked whether expensive restaurants also use less appealing language to describe healthy items, or whether healthy items are described with equally appealing language as standard items in high status dining contexts.

Increasing Vegetable Intake by Emphasizing Tasty and Enjoyable Attributes: A Randomized Controlled Multisite Intervention for Taste-Focused Labeling.

Healthy food labels tout health benefits, yet most people prioritize tastiness in the moment of food choice. In a preregistered intervention, we tested whether taste-focused labels compared with health-focused labels increased vegetable intake at five university dining halls throughout the United States. Across 137,842 diner decisions, 185 days, and 24 vegetable types, taste-focused labels increased vegetable selection by 29% compared with health-focused labels and by 14% compared with basic labels.

Correction: Catechol-O-Methyltransferase moderates effect of stress mindset on affect and cognition.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Learning one's genetic risk changes physiology independent of actual genetic risk.

Millions of people now access personal genetic risk estimates for diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer and obesity. While this information can be informative, research on placebo and nocebo effects suggests that learning of one's genetic risk may evoke physiological changes consistent with the expected risk profile. Here we tested whether merely learning of one's genetic risk for disease alters one's actual risk by making people more likely to exhibit the expected changes in gene-related physiology, behaviour and subjective experience.

Smart food policy for healthy food labeling: Leading with taste, not healthiness, to shift consumption and enjoyment of healthy foods.

Smart food policy models for improving dietary intake recommend tailoring interventions to people's food preferences. Yet, despite people citing tastiness as their leading concern when making food choices, healthy food labels overwhelmingly emphasize health attributes (e.g.

Catechol-O-Methyltransferase moderates effect of stress mindset on affect and cognition.

There is evidence that altering stress mindset-the belief that stress is enhancing vs. debilitating-can change cognitive, affective and physiological responses to stress. However individual differences in responsiveness to stress mindset manipulations have not been explored.

Association Between Indulgent Descriptions and Vegetable Consumption: Twisted Carrots and Dynamite Beets.

This observational study examines the association of labeling vegetables with indulgent descriptions and overall vegetable consumption compared with labeling vegetables with basic or health-focused labels.

Reading between the menu lines: Are restaurants' descriptions of "healthy" foods unappealing?

Objective: As obesity rates continue to climb in America, much of the blame has fallen on the high-calorie meals at popular chain restaurants. Many restaurants have responded by offering "healthy" menu options. Yet menus' descriptions of healthy options may be less attractive than their descriptions of less healthy, standard options.

Colonic immunopathogenesis of Clostridium difficile infections.

There are major gaps in our understanding of the immunopathogenesis of Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs). In this study, 36 different biomarkers were examined in the stools of CDI and non-CDI patients using the Proteome Profiler human cytokine array assay and quantitative enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Diarrheal stools from patients with CDI (CDI-positive diarrheal stools) showed higher relative amounts of the following inflammatory markers than the diarrheal stools from CDI-negative patients (CDI-negative diarrheal stools): C5a, CD40L, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, I-309, interleukin-13 (IL-13), IL-16, IL-27, monocyte chemoattractant protein 1, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and IL-8.