More Like this

1. Investigating Preferred Food Description Practices in Digital Food Journaling

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462145  

   M. Silva, Lucas; A. Epstein, Daniel (June 2021, Designing Interactive Systems)
2. Effect of mobile food environments on fast food visits

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46425-2  

   García Bulle Bueno, Bernardo; Horn, Abigail L.; Bell, Brooke M.; Bahrami, Mohsen; Bozkaya, Burçin; Pentland, Alex; de la Haye, Kayla; Moro, Esteban (March 2024, Nature Communications)

   Abstract Poor diets are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Exposure to low-quality food environments saturated with fast food outlets is hypothesized to negatively impact diet. However, food environment research has predominantly focused on static food environments around home neighborhoods and generated mixed findings. In this work, we leverage population-scale mobility data in the U.S. to examine 62M people’s visits to food outlets and evaluate how food choice is influenced by the food environments people are exposed to as they move through their daily routines. We find that a 10% increase in exposure to fast food outlets in mobile environments increases individuals’ odds of visitation by 20%. Using our results, we simulate multiple policy strategies for intervening on food environments to reduce fast-food outlet visits. This analysis suggests that optimal interventions are informed by spatial, temporal, and behavioral features and could have 2x to 4x larger effect than traditional interventions focused on home food environments. 

   more » « less
3. Using Virtual Reality Food Environments to Study Individual Food Consumer Behavior in an Urban Food Environment

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3562939.3565685  

   Attar, Talia; Oyekoya, Oyewole; Horlyck-Romanovsky, Margrethe (November 2022, 28th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology)
4. Food web complexity modulates environmental impacts on food chain length

   https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.10331  

   Shibasaki, Shota; Terui, Akira (April 2024, Oikos)

   The determinants of food chain length (FCL), a crucial aspect of biodiversity due to its effects on ecosystem functioning, have long been debated. Previous studies proposed resource availability, disturbance, and ecosystem size as environmental drivers. However, studies using stable isotope approaches have shown inconsistent results, indicating missing links between environmental drivers and FCL. Here, we hypothesized that species richness and motifs (i.e. three‐species subgraphs) modulated environmental effects on FCL. Combining empirical food webs with ourN‐species food web model, we found that FCL disproportionately changed at low species richness, with saturation at high species richness. This functional response was essential to the interdependent effects of disturbance and ecosystem size in our model. Disturbance more strongly regulated FCL in smaller ecosystems, where species richness was low. Similarly, increasing ecosystem size enhanced FCL under strong, but not weak, disturbance regimes. Our study suggests that internal food web structure should deepen our understanding of how FCL changes over environments. 

   more » « less
5. Food Insecurity of Children in the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina Food Bank Service Area

   https://doi.org/10.1109/SoutheastCon45413.2021.9401880  

   Patterson, Angel; Esterline, Albert (March 2021, Food Insecurity of Children in the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina Food Bank Service Area)

   null (Ed.)

   North Carolina is labeled as the 10th hungriest state in America, with almost 1 in 5 children in North Carolina facing hunger regularly. Based on these numbers alone, childhood hunger is an important issue that needs to be addressed. This paper focuses on the thirty-four counties serviced by the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. Each county is mapped out, showing the percentage of children receiving free or reduced meals. These numbers are then compared to the number of Weekend Power Packs, Kid Cafes, and School Pantry locations per county. This project illustrates the strength of visual analytics for decision making 

   more » « less