Food product composition, consumer health, and public policy: Introduction and overview of special section

The Stakeholders’ Views on Factors Influencing Nutrition Policy: a Qualitative Study Across Ten European Countries

“…The reformulation of products is a consequence of constant competition between food manufactures. These "new products" although catching consumers with health--related attributes are not always as healthy as the producers persuade them to be [Golan &Unnevehr, 2008]. International food companies administrate huge fi nancial resources they spend on marketing and advertising products regardless of their healthiness; this creates a tension zone and contradiction with nutrition policies.…”

Do U.S. food processors respond to sweetener‐related health information?

“…For our purposes, however, we assume that the augmentation process adjusts inputs and prices for their health attributes. Further, following Golan and Unnevehr (2008) we assume that consumer demand is unchanged in light of changes to the ingredient mix. In particular, the health augmented input is expressed as x h i ¼ x i h i and the health augmented price is expressed as w h i ¼ w i =h i , where x i is the volume of the i-th input used, h i is the unobserved latent health factor, and w i is the price of a unit of the i-th input.…”

“…Figure 2 depicts that the real prices of cane sugar were consistently higher than the real price of HFCS over the study period. The spread between the cane and corn sugar prices may point to an asymmetric effect of agricultural policies--commodity programs and investment in agricultural R&D--that have changed the relative prices of inputs (Golan & Unnevehr, 2008).…”

Setting the Table for a Sustainable and Just Food System

“…First, our nation's food system is broken and the consequences disproportionately affect people of color. For instance, there are policies, such as the use of high-fructose corn syrup in processed foods and the development of the partial hydrogenation process (which introduced artificial trans fats into our diet), that have contributed to rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and cardiac disease (Golan & Unnevehr, 2008). Low-income people of color have been affected disproportionately by these health conditions, in part due to their lack of access to grocery stores and farmers markets that sell high-quality, nutritious, and fresh produce at affordable prices (Morland, Wing, & Roux, 2002;PolicyLink, 2005).…”