Consumer's preferences and willingness to pay for immune enhanced dairy products in Canada

This study examined consumer preferences for, willingness to pay for, and the most preferred mode of delivery for immune enhanced dairy products across Canada. Two sets of choice experiments were designed to evaluate preferences for functional foods and nutraceuticals as the modes of delivery for immune enhanced dairy products. Data (N = 1001) was collected through an online stated preference survey and analyzed using conditional logit model. Results revealed that there is a general consumer interest in immune enhanced dairy products, and consumers place a premium on them. Also, the presence of children below the age of fifteen in a household was a major factor that increased consumer receptivity towards the products. Further results revealed that individuals who usually consume functional foods are less likely to be interested in nutraceuticals, and vice versa, implying that the preferred mode of delivery depended on consumer preferences for either functional foods or nutraceuticals.

113 Owner Dietary and Exercise Regimens Influence Perception of Ideal Body Weight in Dogs

The increasing prevalence of canine obesity across the globe has become the number one health concern for dogs. Part of the problem may be the way owner’s perceive their dog’s body weight. The goal of the current survey was to assess what variables, related to both owner and dog’s feeding and exercising practices, were predictive of the owner’s perception of their dog’s body weight across North America (Canada and the United States) and Europe (France, the United Kingdom and Germany). The online survey was distributed by Qualtrics (Qualtrics XM, Utah, USA) in June 2020. A total of 3,298 responses were collected and were equally distributed across country and sex of respondent. Multinomial logistic regression was performed in SPSS Statistics (Version 26, IBM Corp, North Castle, New York, USA). More than 85% of respondents reported that they believe their dog is an ideal body weight. Results from logistic regression suggest that owners of younger dogs (0–2 years) are 5 times more likely to believe their dog is an ideal body weight compared to older dogs (over 11 years; P < 0.0001). Respondents who selected that they perform vigorous exercise, themselves, less often than 4 days per week were less likely to believe that their dog is an ideal body weight compared to those who reported vigorously exercising for more than 5 days per week (P < 0.05). Finally those who reported feeding their dog a fixed amount of food were more likely to believe their dog is an ideal body weight (P = 0.044) while those who reported restricting their dogs food intake to control weight were less likely to believe their dog is an ideal body weight (P < 0.0001). Overall, both human and dog dietary and exercise routines were predictive of a dog owner’s perception of their dogs body weight.

Food Skills: Associations With Diet Quality and Food Waste Among Canadian Parents

OBJECTIVE

To examine the association between self-reported food skills and diet quality along with measured food waste among a sample of Canadian parents.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional data from surveys to assess food skills, 3-day food records to assess the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2015, and food waste measured by household waste audits.

SETTING

Guelph-Wellington, Ontario.

PARTICIPANTS

Parents (n = 130) with children aged 2-8 years.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

HEI-2015 scores, daily per capita avoidable and unavoidable food waste (grams).

ANALYSIS

Linear regression using generalized estimating equations to determine unstandardized β estimates of associations between food skills and dependent variables. Models were adjusted for multiple testing, gender, and level of education.

RESULTS

Food safety knowledge for cooking hot foods (β = 4.3, P = 0.05), planning (β = 4.5, P = 0.001), and conceptualizing food (β = 4.0, P = 0.03) were positively associated with HEI-2015 scores. Knowledge related to best before dates (β = 25.3, P = 0.05; β = 12.1, P = 0.04), conceptualizing food (β = 34.1, P = 0.01; β = 13.8, P = 0.02), and mechanical techniques (β = 39.2, P = 0.01; β = 20.5, P = 0.004) were associated with more avoidable and unavoidable food waste, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Addressing higher-level food skills with a focus on efficient food preparation practices that make use of all edible portions of foods could play an important role in minimizing food waste and improving diet quality. Additional research in other countries and in a larger, more socioeconomically diverse sample is needed to confirm these findings.

Association between diet quality and food waste in Canadian families: a cross-sectional study

Background

Higher diet quality has been associated with greater amounts of food waste among adults in the United States. This study aims to build on previous work by examining the association between diet quality and food waste, as assessed using detailed waste audits, among a sample of Canadian families.

Methods

This cross-sectional study used data from 85 Canadian families with young children. Parent and children diet quality was assessed using the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015), calculated from 3-day food records. Household food waste was measured using detailed waste audits conducted over multiple weeks and these data were used to calculate daily per capita food waste. Linear regression was used to explore the association between parent and child HEI-2015 scores and daily per capita total avoidable and unavoidable food waste, as well as daily per capita avoidable and unavoidable food waste in the following categories: 1) fruits and vegetables, 2) milk, cheese and eggs, 3) meat and fish, 4) breads and cereals, 5) fats and sugars.

Results

Parent HEI-2015 scores ranged from 37 to 92 (out of 100) and 81% of parents’ diets scored in the “Needs Improvement (51-80)” category. Parent and child diet quality scores were significantly correlated (r = 0.61; P < 0.0001) and 82% of children’s diets scored in the “Needs Improvement” category. On average, households produced 107 g of avoidable food waste and 52 g of unavoidable food waste per person per day. Fruits and vegetables were the highest contributor for both avoidable and unavoidable food waste. Both parent and child HEI-2015 scores were not significantly associated with total daily per capita avoidable or unavoidable food waste. However, parent HEI-2015 scores were positively associated with daily per capita avoidable fruit and vegetable waste (Unstandardized β = 1.05; 95%CI: 0.11, 1.99; P = 0.03) and daily per capita unavoidable fruit and vegetable waste (Unstandardized β = 0.60; 95%CI: 0.03, 1.17; P = 0.04), after adjusting for household income.

Conclusion

This is the first study to explore the association between diet quality and food waste using detailed waste audits. Future research should explore effective strategies towards improving diet quality while simultaneously reducing food waste, especially of fruits and vegetables.

Assessing the Value of Antibiotics on Farms: Modeling the Impact of Antibiotics and Vaccines for Managing Lawsonia intracellularis in Hog Production

Increasing awareness of antibiotic resistance has correspondingly increased efforts to identify and reduce the causal behaviors that led to this severe public health threat. The consequences of these efforts are regulatory and market pressures limiting antibiotic use by livestock farmers which may lead to significant financial and welfare challenges on the farm, even if antibiotics can be substituted by vaccines. The purpose of this study is to measure the relative cost-effectiveness of antibiotics vs. vaccines for controlling L. intracellularis on a Canadian farrow-to-finish pig farm. This is done by modeling the production and economic impact of different antibiotics and vaccines available for managing this disease, listed in the Canadian Compendium of Veterinary Products. The economic impacts (in Canadian dollars) of the disease are estimated and the net benefits of alternative prevention and treatment options are compared to determine the relative cost-effectiveness of each strategy. Of the 12 options analyzed, four were preventative (antibiotic and vaccine) and eight were antibiotic treatments. Prophylactic chlortetracycline (an antibiotic) is the most cost-effective option for managing L. intracellularis, while Porcilis Ileitis (a vaccine) is the least cost-effective strategy. This result remains robust considering sensitivity analysis of the production parameters, which indicates that preventative antibiotics are more cost-effective than vaccines. This implies that banning preventative antibiotic treatments harms the bottom line of farmers under current market conditions.

Valuing the Multiple Impacts of Household Food Waste

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has estimated that Canadian households waste 85 kg of food per person annually. Food waste has become an increasingly common focus for policy, regulation, interventions, and awareness-raising efforts in Canada. However, there is still a relative dearth of data to inform such decision-making processes or to provide narratives to contextualize behavior change efforts. In this paper, we describe the results of an uncommonly detailed observational study of household food waste. A total of 94 families with young children living in Guelph, Ontario chose to participate in this study. Over the course of multiple weeks, we collected data on their food purchases, food consumption, and waste generation. All three streams of waste (garbage, recycling, and organic waste) were audited and the food type, degree of avoidability, and weight of each individual component of the organic waste stream was recorded. Using this highly granular data set, we found that the average household in our study generated approximately 2.98 kg of avoidable food waste per week. This estimate was then contextualized in terms of economic losses (dollar value), nutritional losses (calories, vitamins, and minerals) and environmental impacts (global warming potential, land, and water usage). In short, weekly avoidable food waste per household was calculated to be equivalent to $18.01, 3,366 calories, and 23.3 kg of CO₂. These multiple valuation frameworks, which are based in detailed observations of family food behaviors rather than estimations derived from system-wide data, will enable more informed and urgent conversations about policy, programming, and interventions in order to reduce the volume of wasted food at the consumer level.