Public seminar - Physical Activity and Nutrition
These public seminars hosted by the University of Newcastle Priority Research Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition presents Dr Christina Hartmann and Professor Michael Siegrist from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Disgusting insects and drivers of healthy food choice
Dr Christina Hartmann
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
The first part of Christina's talk is dedicated to disgust and the consumption of insects. Disgust once evolved to protect against the ingestion of potential harmful agents, it is now considered a barrier for the acceptance of new innovative food sources. Christina will present a new project related to disgust and its application in the food domain. Insects are compulsively rejected as non-food in Western societies, even though they are an excellent and sustainable source of animal protein. One of Christina's studies is about the acceptance of insects as foods in Germany and China. Christina proposes some information about how consumers could be nudged towards the consumption of insects. In the second part of Christina's presentation, she will talk about survey studies that examined various factors such as cooking skills and life events, influencing people's food behaviour.
Christina Hartmann works as a postdoctoral researcher at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She studied nutritional science at the University Giessen, Germany, and received her PhD from the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. In her PhD-thesis, she analyzed data from a longitudinal panel study regarding the eating behavior of the Swiss population and about other aspects related to nutrition and food consumption. In general, Christina's research is dedicated to consumer behavior and nutrition psychology. At the moment, her research focus is on perception and acceptance of new food sources, factors influencing preferences development and food choices. She has a strong background with surveys, but is also interested in experimental research.
Better understanding consumers' food choices: selected results
Professor Michael Siegrist
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
In his talk, Michael will give an overview about the research of the Consumer Behavior group at ETH. The research of this group focuses on perception, acceptance, and behavior related to new technologies, foods and the environment. Michael will provide a short overview of his research, and he will then focus on four recent studies. 1.) Two short scales that measure practical knowledge about meal calories and knowledge about a balanced meal based on current dietary guidelines have been developed. Both scales are reliable and valid Rasch-based instruments that enable researchers to measure lay people's knowledge in an efficient way. 2.) Different labels have been proposed to enable consumers to make more balanced food decisions. The eye-tracking method was combined with an experimental approach. The effectiveness of three different formats, the nutrition table format, the guideline daily amounts (GDAs) format, and the traffic light (TL) format, was examined. Results suggest that from an information processing perspective, the TL format has advantages over the other two formats. The TL format is a consumer-friendly way of communicating nutrition information. 3.) Food consumption comprises a significant portion of the total environmental impact of households. The relationship between the global warming potential (GWP) of and consumers' liking of meals was examined in two field studies in the same restaurant. Contrary to expectations, it was found in both studies that the GWP of the meals was unrelated to the taste or the number of purchases. As expected, the introduction of the climate-friendly choice label increased the number of climate-friendly meal purchases. 4.) The Swiss Food Panel, a population-based longitudinal study of the Swiss people's eating behaviors will be described. In 2010, a mail survey was sent out to 20,912 household addresses randomly selected from the telephone book in the German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland. In the first wave (2010), 6290 of the invited participants completed the food panel questionnaire (30% response rate). Each participant received another questionnaire in February of each consecutive year (2010–2014). Selected results of this longitudinal study will be presented.
Michael Siegrist is a full Professor for Consumer Behavior at the Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED), ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Prof. Siegrist studied psychology, economics and mass communication at the University of Zurich. Prof. Siegrist is an Associate Area Editor of the journal Risk Analysis and an Executive Editor of the journal Appetite. He has published numerous articles about risk perception, trust, risk communication, and food behavior. His research focuses currently on factors influencing healthy food consumption, sustainable food consumption and perception of food hazards.
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