Changing food choices: the option for high-protein foods and the move away from the Mediterranean diet.

Purpose:  The growing importance placed on health and physical well-being by consumers continues to influence food industry choices. The food market therefore, pandering to the desires for a lean and athletic body, offers new products deemed more healthy and able to impact body image. It is evidenced, thus, a change in food choices and habits, with more attention to the quality and nutrient content of the products consumed, in which protein is assuming increasing importance.

Role of Portion Size in the Context of a Healthy, Balanced Diet: A Case Study of European Countries.

Over the past decades, a generalised increase in food portion sizes has probably contributed to the growing global obesity epidemic. Increasing awareness of appropriate portion sizes could contribute to reversing this trend through better control of calorie intake. In this study, a comparison of standard portion sizes in European countries for various food categories shows a wide variability of their importance for food, nutrient, and energy consumption according to government and institutional websites.

Social networks and eating disorders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to assess the increase both in the use of the Internet and social media and in Google searches regarding eating disorders (ED) in Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our aim is also to verify the possible impact of such an increase on ED, since patients treated for ED by the National Health Service (NHS) have increased in the first 6 months of 2020 as well.

Method: We used data from Wearesocial surveys on Internet users in the first 6 months of 2020 and the Google searches related to the query of "food disorders" and "body shaming.

What women think about menopause: An Italian survey.

Introduction: Menopause is a critical period for most women who experience associated symptoms while they are still socially and individually active.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to report how Italian women perceive and approach menopause.

Materials And Methods: A survey of 1028 Italian women aged 45-65 years was conducted by the Italian Center for Studies of Social Investments (CENSIS) through anonymous interviews using two methods: CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) and CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing).

Changes in food choice following restrictive measures due to Covid-19.

Background And Aims: Following the Covid-19 proliferation beyond the borders of China at the beginning of 2020, containment measures have been taken by different countries around the globe. Citizens were forced to stay at home. The aim of this study is twofold.

Correction to: Nutrition behaviour and compliance with the Mediterranean diet pyramid recommendations: an Italian survey‑based study.

The article "Nutrition behaviour and compliance with the Mediterranean diet pyramid recommendations: an Italian survey‑based study", written by "Renata Bracale, Concetta M. Vaccaro, Vittoria Coletta, Claudio Cricelli, Francesco Carlo Gamaleri, Fabio Parazzini and Michele Carruba" was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal on 8th November 2019 without open access.

Nutrition behaviour and compliance with the Mediterranean diet pyramid recommendations: an Italian survey-based study.

Purpose: Adopting a Mediterranean-like dietary pattern may help in preventing several chronic diseases. We assessed the eating behaviour and compliance with the Mediterranean diet pyramid recommendations in Italy.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted in subjects aged ≥ 20 years.

Value based healthcare for rare diseases: efficiency, efficacy, equity.

The paper reviews the literature available on value based health care and relates it to rare diseases. Starting from the economic definition of value and healthcare evaluation, efficacy and efficiency, it includes the equity dimension to define value-based healthcare. It embraces also the cultural framework associated to the concepts of health and disease, normal and pathological, right or wrong for the patient.

Development and validation of a patient-reported outcome tool to assess cancer-related financial toxicity in Italy: a protocol.

Introduction: Financial toxicity (FT) is a well-recognised problem in oncology. US-based studies have shown that: (a) cancer patients have a 2.7 times risk of bankruptcy; (b) patients who declare bankruptcy have a 79% greater hazard of death; (c) financial burden significantly impairs quality of life (QoL) and (d) reduces compliance and adherence to treatment prescriptions.

A comparison between the costs of dialysis treatments in Marche Region, Italy: Macerata and Tolentino hospitals.

Backgrounds: The main aim of this study was to estimate the costs of different dialysis modalities through the analysis of administrative databases in the Macerata and Tolentino hospitals, in Italy.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed two main categories: medical direct costs (all the monetary costs whose consumption is wholly referable to dialysis treatment) and non-medical direct costs (all the costs that make treatment possible but that are outside the medical care sector), related to 2013. Attention was focused on the analysis of the extracorporeal dialysis methods (HD, HDF/AFB, HDF/MID/HFR) and the peritoneal dialysis (APD, CAPD).

[A Censis survey on atrial fibrillation awareness in the general population and among general practitioners and affected patients in Italy].

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia in clinical practice, particularly in the elderly. AF is considered an independent predictor of mortality and risk factor for stroke. AF-related stroke is usually severe and associated with a high rate of mortality and disability.