Abstract Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of food and beverage marketing on Twitch.tv (Twitch), a social media platform where individuals broadcast live audiovisual material to millions of daily users. Design: Observational analysis of the prevalence of 238 food and beverage brands in five distinct categories (processed snacks; food delivery services and restaurants; candies, energy drinks/coffees/teas; and sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages) over the course of 18 months. Setting: Twitch streamer profiles and stream titles between January 2018 and July 2019. Twitch chat room messages during July 2019. Participants: None. Results: There was a significant increase in brand exposure on Twitch both in stream titles (sodas and candies, P < 0·05) and on streamer profiles (sodas, restaurants/food delivery services, candies, and energy drinks/coffees/teas, P < 0·05) over the 18-month study period. Energy drinks, coffees and teas had the most exposure with 1·08 billion exposure hours from profiles and 83 million exposure hours from titles. Restaurants/food delivery services and sugar-sweetened beverages were the most frequently mentioned products in chat rooms with 1·24 million messages and 1·10 million messages, respectively. Conclusions: This study is the first to demonstrate the extent by which food and beverage brands garner millions of hours of exposure on Twitch. Future studies should evaluate the impact that this level of exposure to nutrient-poor, energy-dense products may have on behavioural and health outcomes.

The prevalence of obesity and eating disorders varies by sex, but the extent to which sex influences eating behaviors, especially in childhood, has received less attention. The purpose of this paper is to critically discuss the literature on sex differences in eating behavior in children and present new findings supporting the role of sex in child appetitive traits and neural responses to food cues. In children, the literature shows sex differences in food acceptance, food intake, appetitive traits, eating-related compensation, and eating speed. New analyses demonstrate that sex interacts with child weight status to differentially influence appetitive traits. Further, results from neuroimaging suggest that obesity in female children is positively related to neural reactivity to higher-energy-dense food cues in regions involved with contextual processing and object recognition, while the opposite was found in males. In addition to differences in how the brain processes information about food, other factors that may contribute to sex differences include parental feeding practices, societal emphasis on dieting, and peer influences. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings, as they may have implications for the development of effective intervention programs to improve dietary behaviors and prevent obesity.

PurposeThis study compared cognitive (attention, learning, and memory) and typing outcomes during slow treadmill walking or sitting. Seventy-five healthy individuals were randomly assigned to a treadmill walking group (n=37; 23 female) or sitting group (n=38; 17 female).MethodsThe treadmill walking group completed a series of tests while walking at 1.5 mph. The sitting group performed the same tests while sitting at a standard desk. Tests performed by both groups included: the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and a modified version of the Paced Auditory Serial Attention Test. In addition, typing performance was evaluated.ResultsParticipants in the treadmill walking group performed worse on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test for total learning than the sitting group; the main effect was significant (F(1,73)=4.75, p=0.03, η p 2=0.06); however, short- and long-delay recall performance did not differ between groups (p>0.05). For the Paced Auditory Serial Attention Test, total number of correct responses was lower in the treadmill walking group relative to the sitting group; the main effect was significant (F(1,73)=4.97, p=0.03, η p 2=0.06). The performance of both groups followed the same learning slope (Group x Trial interactions were not significant) for the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and Paced Auditory Serial Attention Test. Individuals in the treadmill walking group performed significantly worse for all measures of typing (p<0.05).ConclusionWalking on a treadmill desk may result in a modest difference in total learning and typing outcomes relative to sitting, but those declines may not outweigh the benefit of the physical activity gains from walking on a treadmill.

The extent that neural responsiveness to visual food stimuli is influenced by time of day is not well examined. Using a crossover design, 15 healthy women were scanned using fMRI while presented with low- and high-energy pictures of food, once in the morning (6:30-8:30 am) and once in the evening (5:00-7:00 pm). Diets were identical on both days of the fMRI scans and were verified using weighed food records. Visual analog scales were used to record subjective perception of hunger and preoccupation with food prior to each fMRI scan. Six areas of the brain showed lower activation in the evening to both high- and low-energy foods, including structures in reward pathways (P < 0.05). Nine brain regions showed significantly higher activation for high-energy foods compared to low-energy foods (P < 0.05). High-energy food stimuli tended to produce greater fMRI responses than low-energy food stimuli in specific areas of the brain, regardless of time of day. However, evening scans showed a lower response to both low- and high-energy food pictures in some areas of the brain. Subjectively, participants reported no difference in hunger by time of day (F = 1.84, P = 0.19), but reported they could eat more (F = 4.83, P = 0.04) and were more preoccupied with thoughts of food (F = 5.51, P = 0.03) in the evening compared to the morning. These data underscore the role that time of day may have on neural responses to food stimuli. These results may also have clinical implications for fMRI measurement in order to prevent a time of day bias.

An increasing trend in the workplace is for employees to walk on treadmills while working to attain known health benefits; however, the effect of walking on a treadmill during cognitive control and executive function tasks is not well known. We compared the cognitive control processes of conflict adaptation (i.e., congruency sequence effects—improved performance following high-conflict relative to low-conflict trials), post-error slowing (i.e., Rabbitt effect), and response inhibition during treadmill walking (1.5 mph) relative to sitting. Understanding the influence of treadmill desks on these cognitive processes may have implications for worker health and productivity. Sixty-nine individuals were randomized to either a sitting (n = 35) or treadmill-walking condition (n = 34). Groups did not differ in age or body mass index. All participants completed a computerized Eriksen flanker task and a response-inhibition go/no-go task in random order while either walking on a treadmill or seated. Response times (RTs) and accuracy were analyzed separately for each task using mixed model analysis of variance. Separate ANOVAs for RTs and accuracy showed the expected conflict adaptation effects, post-error slowing, and response inhibition effects when collapsed across sitting and treadmill groups (all Fs > 78.77, Ps < 0.001). There were no main effects or interactions as a function of group for any analyses (Fs < 0.79, Ps > 0.38), suggesting no decrements or enhancements in conflict-related control and adjustment processes or response inhibition for those walking on a treadmill versus sitting. We conclude that cognitive control performance remains relatively unaffected during slow treadmill walking relative to sitting.