Fresh fruit and vegetable choices: analyzing influential factors in Tennessee households

BackgroundFood insecurity is one of the social determinants of health and affects dietary quality and well-being. This study aimed to examine the associations among food insecurity, sociodemographic and economic factors, and health-diet characteristics, with a particular focus on fresh fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption during the late COVID-19 pandemic in Czechia.MethodsData from a cross-sectional survey, ‘Living through the Pandemic', collected in October 2022 as part of a Czech longitudinal survey, were analysed. The study included a representative sample of Czech adults (N = 1,499, aged 20 years and above). Binary logistic regression was performed to assess associations among food insecurity, sociodemographic-economic factors and health-diet factors. Food insecurity was assessed as experiencing or worrying about a lack of food. Sociodemographic-economic factors included sex, age, education, income, number of children and home food production. Health-diet factors included BMI, limited mobility and daily fresh FV intake, defined as eating fresh FV at least once per day. Determinants of daily fresh FV intake were analysed separately.ResultsOver 30% of respondents (N = 486) were at risk of food insecurity. Individuals aged 20–34 years, those with lower educational attainment, and those with limited mobility were more likely to report food insecurity. Compared with the high-income category, individuals in the lowest income category had a sevenfold higher likelihood of reporting food insecurity. Food-insecure individuals had approximately twofold higher odds of not having fresh FV daily. The odds of not having fresh FV were particularly higher among younger adults (20–34 years) and males. Individuals with BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 had 30% higher odds of not having daily FV, with marginal significance (p = 0.05). Educational attainment, rather than income, was a key predictor of FV consumption. Home food production contributed to better food security and higher FV consumption.ConclusionIn Czechia food insecurity and the limited FV intake relate to younger adults, socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals, and those with limited mobility. Lower education attainment, rather than income, predicts limited consumption of FV, underscoring the long-term impact of early education on healthy eating. Given the high prevalence of overweight and obesity, inadequate FV intake presents a public health concern. Policies should aim to improve access to affordable and nutritious foods, and strengthen education on healthy eating habits to mitigate long-term health disparities.

FP15 Students Pick a Better Snack: Increase Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Consumption

In 2017, the mayor of New York City (NYC) unveiled a 10-year plan to close the city’s largest jail complex and to build four satellite detention centers – including one in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Chinatown is a destination for affordable produce and its retail produce sector is comprised of street vendors and small stores, a style of fresh fruit and vegetable (FV) marketing the city promotes to achieve its goal of equitable access to healthy foods. The objective of this study was to project the impact of the proposed construction activity on FV consumption among residents in Chinatown. We developed an agent-based model that accounts for individual and neighborhood-level factors (e.g., age, gender, education, food environment) to predict FV consumption at the neighborhood level in NYC. We assumed that long-term construction will lead to the closure/migration of fresh produce vendors and therefore a reduction of FV access. We simulated three scenarios in which the number of fresh produce vendors is reduced by 5%, 10%, and 15% due to construction. Results suggest that planned construction could decrease the consumption of FV by 2.1%, 4.4%, and 6.8% among residents in Chinatown if the construction would reduce the number of fresh produce vendors by 5%, 10%, and 15%, respectively. Preliminary sensitivity analyses demonstrate the negative impact of the construction on FV consumption could be greater among older (65+ years) vs. young adults. The planned construction of a detention center in Chinatown may decrease the consumption of FV among its residents, particularly older adults.

This congressionally mandated study of the Canned, Frozen, and Dried pilot project for the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP‐CFD) assessed the impact of the pilot on students' fruit and vegetable consumption and wastage, FFVP participation, and schools' implementation strategies. The pilot allowed, but did not require, elementary schools that reported problems with access to fresh fruits and vegetables (FVs) to offer CFD snacks in the FFVP in school year (SY) 2014–2015. The evaluation used a pre/post design, comparing data from the fall of 2014, when the standard FFVP was in place, to data from the spring of 2015, when the FFVP‐CFD pilot was in place. For an evaluation of the pilot, we collected student dietary recalls to measure detailed food and nutrient intake in‐school, a student survey to assess student attitudes on FFVP snacks and FV preferences, and we observed one week of FFVP snack offerings in 101 classrooms in 34 pilot schools in four pilot states (Alaska, Delaware, Kansas, and Maine) in both fall and spring of SY 2014–2015. Although FFVP‐CFD study findings are not generalizable to other schools in the FFVP nationwide, they do provide important information on students' attitudes and preferences for specific fruits and vegetables in selected small and rural schools in four pilot states, including Alaska, which is often excluded from national school nutrition evaluations. The final evaluation report is in clearance at USDA. It is anticipated that the report will be cleared by April 2017 and that we will present the impact findings for the first time publicly at EB 2017.Support or Funding InformationEvaluation funded by the Food and Nutrition Service, USDA.

The objective of this study was to identify the effects of mealtime habits, knowledge, and skills on fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) consumption in food deserts. A survey of 1200 respondents was conducted in food deserts across three metropolitan areas in north Florida. Planning meals around meat, lack of cooking skills, viewing vegetables as luxury items, and other incomplete skills, lack of knowledge, or negative mealtime habits resulted in lower consumption of FFV, even when controlling for access. Our results underscore the importance of an approach to food security that emphasizes both nutrition education and improving access in food deserts.

Fungal infections of fresh fruits and vegetables (FFVs) can lead to safety problems, including consumer poisoning by mycotoxins. Various strategies exist to control fungal infections of FFVs, but their effectiveness and sustainability are limited. Recently, new concepts based on the microbiome and pathobiome have emerged and offer a more holistic perspective for advancing postharvest pathogen control techniques. Understanding the role of the microbiome in FFV infections is essential for developing sustainable control strategies. This review examines current and emerging approaches to postharvest pathology. It reviews what is known about the initiation and development of infections in FFVs. As a promising concept, the pathobiome offers new insights into the basic mechanisms of microbial infections in FFVs. The underlying mechanisms uncovered by the pathobiome are being used to develop more relevant global antifungal strategies. This review will also focus on new technologies developed to target the microbiome and members of the pathobiome to control infections in FFVs and improve safety by limiting mycotoxin contamination. Specifically, this review stresses emerging technologies related to FFVs that are relevant for modifying the interaction between FFVs and the microbiome and include the use of microbial consortia, the use of genomic technology to manipulate host and microbial community genes, and the use of databases, deep learning, and artificial intelligence to identify pathobiome markers. Other approaches include programming the behavior of FFVs using synthetic biology, modifying the microbiome using sRNA technology, phages, quorum sensing, and quorum quenching strategies. Rapid adoption and commercialization of these technologies are recommended to further improve the overall safety of FFVs.

Who Reaps the Fruit? Critical Issues in the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Chain

This PhD thesis comprises five papers on price determination in the EU fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) market. In the paper The EU Import Regime for Oranges Much Ado about Nothing? we focus on the relevance of the EU import system for oranges, comprising the EU entry price system (EPS) and a system of trade preferences aiming to achieve two contrasting goals. Analogously to a minimum import price, the EPS is designed to protect EU growers against international competition by restricting imports below a product-specific entry price. In contrast, the orange trade preferences, granted to the EU orange growers main competitors, i.e. the orange producing Mediterranean (MED) countries ((Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Cyprus (pre EU accession in 2004), aim to induce EU imports of oranges by granting preferential market access. We find that the contribution of the EU import regime for oranges to the protection of EU orange growers is rather low. Also, orange trade preferences are utilized by the MED at a low degree and seem not to have triggered additional EU orange imports. The paper The EU Entry Price System for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Paper Tiger or Powerful Market Barrier? is unique in comprehensively analyzing the effectiveness of the EPS regarding all 15 kinds of fruits and vegetables to which the EPS applies and countries of origin of the production. We develop two indicators measuring the effectiveness of the EPS based on a data set of 60,000 observations of synthetic EU import prices. A cluster analysis identifies four clusters which differ in the relevance of the EPS. We find that the importance of the EPS is heterogeneous across products and countries of origin for most kinds of FFV. It is highly relevant in 36% of the analyzed cases and redundant for the others. In general, the EPS is most relevant to the EU s direct neighbouring countries and of less importance for the countries more distant to the EU due to high transport costs and thus relatively high EU import prices. Results gained in the latter study motivate us for the paper Does the Entry Price System restrict Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Exports from China to the EU? . Although the EPS is on average less important for apples and pears, results suggest that it is highly relevant for EU imports of apples and pears from China. Our investigations suggest that due to China s highly efficient sea transport system, sea transport costs are low compared to other countries which are distant to the EU market, implying that Chinese FFV products are supplied to the EU at low prices. The paper Vertical Price Transmission in the International Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chain: Israeli Grapefruit Exports to the EU after Export Market Liberalization is unique in investigating vertical price transmission in the international FFV supply chain and aims to shed light on the issue of market power. This analysis is conducted within an error correction model approach in the context of Israeli grapefruit exports to the EU in the aftermath of the liberalization of the Israeli export sector in 1991. Our results indicate that two of the three dominating exporters have transmitted price changes from the French import price asymmetrically to the Israeli growers in the years directly after liberalization. Though, in the subsequent time period, all three exporters transmit prices symmetrically and the difference between the firm-specific grower prices has decreased. We attribute this change in the exporter s pricing behaviour to the market intervention by the Israeli government in 1994/95. Finally, the paper Threshold adjustment and/or threshold cointegration? An application to the German apple market is unique in suggesting a vector error correction approach to analyze spatial price transmission which allows not only the short-run adjustment towards the long-run equilibrium, but also the long-run equilibrium itself to be non-linear. The threshold effects are assumed to be triggered by a threshold variable with respect to a threshold value. This model approach is based on the Gonzalo and Pitarakis test on threshold cointegration. In an application to the German wholesale market for apples we find clear evidence on threshold cointegration. We identify 4 price transmission regimes with different equilibrium relationships as well as short-run adjustment towards this equilibrium and the share of German apples of all apples traded in the markets serving as the threshold variable.

Factors Influencing Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables in Older Adults in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the preference criteria for purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables (FFV) and for where FFV is sold according to thesocio-economic characteristic of consumers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Material and Methods: In order to meet the above objective, an online survey was conducted. A sample of 720 respondents was selected from the residents of all cities in Turkey using the snowball method, which is one of the non-probability sampling methods. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests were used to examine the statistical relationship between socio-economic characteristics and preference criteria. Results: The most important criterion are respectively freshness, taste/smell and food safety for purchasing FFV products. Besides, when choosing the place to be purchased, the most important criteria are respectively freshness, hygiene of place and hygiene of staff. Women give more importance to freshness of pruducts compared to males (p<0.05). The importance given to the hygiene of the product and place increases as the education level increases (p<0.05). Conclusion: The results could provide valuable insights to farmers, retailers and wholesalers targeting FFV consumers. It is recommended that the priority of price should be replaced by the priority of freshness, safety and hygiene. Only in this way can all players in the FFV marketing chain offer a better functioning system.

A high-quality diet that includes recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables (FV) is associated with reduced risk for cancer and improved health outcomes for cancer survivors. There is evidence that some cancer disparities among minorities are associated with diet quality, and there is persistent evidence of poor nutrition and food insecurity among low-income minorities in the U.S. This has led to federal efforts to increase fresh fruit and vegetable consumption among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. As part of an evaluation of an intervention to increase fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) consumption in SNAP households, this study asked: How do perceived barriers to eating more FVs vary by age, gender, race/ethnicity, and level of education? The AARP Foundation implemented the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) Grant Program in two southeastern states. SNAP participants could receive financial incentives through their SNAP cards in the form of coupons or tokens for purchasing FFVs or SNAP items at grocery stores and farmers' markets in selected communities. Individual households in these communities were randomly selected and invited to respond to an evaluation survey via the internet or a telephone survey. The survey included seven questions from the National Cancer Institute Food Attitudes and Behaviors Study about barriers to eating FVs, with ratings on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. Responses were summed to create composite barriers scores. Completed baseline surveys were received from 1,459 households in Tennessee and Mississippi. There were significant age differences for three barriers, with survey respondents aged 65 and older being more likely to report the following barriers: hard to find FVs where I shop (p<.023), cost too much (p<0.001), and I do not like (p<0.029). Respondents 18-29 years reported time to prepare as a barrier more often than other age groups (p<0.05). Males gave a higher barrier rating for knowing how to prepare (p<0.044) and females for costing too much (p<0.034). Whites gave the lowest barrier rating for difficult to prepare (p<0.002) and the highest rating for cost (p<0.001), while Hispanics gave the highest rating for personal dislike of FVs (p<0.006). Those with high school or less education tended to rate the following barriers higher than participants who had gone to college: don't know how to prepare (p<0.001), don't have time to prepare (p<0.008), hard to find where I shop (p<0.006), family dislikes (p<0.001), personal dislike (p<0.001), and average barrier rating (p<0.001). Across all demographic groups, cost was reported as the biggest barrier. Conclusions: The results suggest that interventions to increase FV consumption for cancer prevention and improved outcomes for minority cancer survivors may need to be tailored to address different needs based on age, gender, ethnicity, and level of education. Citation Format: Caprice Brown, Pam Hull, Rebecca Selove, David G. Schlundt, Joscelyn Silsby. Barriers to eating fruits and vegetables among a low-income ethnically diverse population [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2018 Nov 2-5; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl):Abstract nr A033.

The study investigates separately demand characteristics of consuming healthy food such as fresh fruit and vegetable (FV) based on the 2003/2004 Nigeria Living Standard Survey (NLSS) data. It uses the double-hurdle model that allows the analysis of both the decisions to consume and the demand for FV to differ. The empirical results show that an average household in the sample considered the demand for FV to be luxury good. But a closer look at the results across income groups show that households in the low and high-income groups considered the demand for fresh fruit to be necessity and luxury goods, respectively, while all households irrespective of which income groups they belong considered the demand for fresh vegetable to be luxury good in the study. Our results also imply that the demand for FV is higher among households with younger members, compared to households with older members. Regional differences in the demand for FV are also evident in the study.

This paper examines how trusting relations between consumers and vendors of organic fresh fruits and vegetables (FFVs) in a particular type of farmers’ market (FM) in Ireland are established and maintained, and what the implications of this are. First, the food system is outlined, and then its attendant problems. These problems have led to various solutions, two of which are organic food and FMs. Then, the growth in these two areas is outlined, as is the accompanying growth in the academic literature on these two areas, some of which overlaps. Various pressures, including in particular the increasing distance food travels and disconnected stallholders and products at the FM, are suggested. In light of this, a need to apply an understanding of the reflexive consumer, trust and social movements is suggested. It is found that the consumers interviewed act reflexively by choosing to go to these FMs. They prioritize the trusting relationships built up through repeated personal contact at these FMs over and above organic certification. Along with and as part of this, they prioritize local, fresh, seasonal ‘chemical‐free’ FFVs over and above imported certified organic produce. Various aspects of collective identity formation, including modes of behaviour, objects and stories, and language, are involved in this process. These elements, to some extent, act as a buffer against the pressures of distance and disconnection. Along with this, the essential meaning of the word organic is, in this particular context, reconstructed to include various socio‐environmental values missing from some certified organic produce. The word postorganic is suggested. The main methodologies used are semistructured in‐depth interviews and participant observation.

Fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) waste at consumer’s level represents a considerable part of global waste in developed regions. Part of this waste stems from poor purchasing strategies and/or planning, but storage and hygiene practices may represent powerful means to reduce domestic FFV loss. The first aim of this study was to determine whether the hygiene status of storage compartments impacted spoilage. Containers were inoculated with five spoilage organisms (3 molds and 2 bacteria), before storing FFV for four weeks at refrigerated or room temperature, and monitoring their deterioration. Temperature was the main factor influencing FFV loss. Contamination of surface compartments also significantly led to more spoilage on carrots and apples, but not on lemons and tomatoes. Different disinfectants were then tested to verify their efficacy against foodborne pathogens and spoilage organisms. After five minutes exposure, food contact disinfectant, sodium hypochlorite, white vinegar and rubbing alcohol were effective against all 12 tested organisms (3 to 4 log reduction) while lemon juice showed mitigated results. This is the first study assessing the link between storage contamination and FFV spoilage and the disinfection efficacy of so-called “Grandma’s remedies”. Overall, our results highlight the importance of consumer education about storage and cleaning/disinfecting practices. • The effect of domestic storage and hygiene practices on FFV spoilage was studied • Storage temperature was the predominant factor accelerating FFV spoilage • Contamination in compartments contributed to spoilage to a lesser extent • Biocidal effect of chemical and “green” disinfectants was assessed • All showed good disinfection efficacy against pathogens and spoilers, except lemon juice

Food loss and waste generated throughout the food chain are major concerns in today's society. A high level of food waste occurs at the household's level and fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) spoilage caused by microbial growth accounts for a large part of these losses. While numerous studies focused on spoilage microorganism diversity from primary production to distribution, little is known about those involved at the household level. In this context, this study aimed at investigating which FFV are usually wasted depending on the season and storage conditions at households, and identifying the microorganisms associated with spoiled FFV. During two periods (summer and autumn), 346 spoiled FFV samples were collected using a citizen science approach in 49 households in the Brest area (Finistère, Brittany, France). About three quarters of spoiled FFV collected originated from room temperature storage and 75% were collected during summer. Among the studied samples, 75% showed microbial growth after plating onto agar-based medium, and therefore, were likely spoiled because of microbial spoilage. Overall, 183 molds, 31 yeasts and 96 bacteria were isolated and identified using MALDI-TOF MS and sequencing. Among the 42 different mold species identified, Penicillium spp. were the most common representing more than 50% of mold isolates followed by Botrytis (12.4%), Mucor (8.6%) and Cladosporium (7.6%) spp. Hanseniaspora uvarum and Aureobasidium pullulans were the most prevalent yeast species while bacterial isolates showed the highest diversity of all identified organisms (49 species) with Pseudomonas spp., enterobacteria and lactic acid bacteria representing the most frequently isolated taxa. This study shows for the first time the microbial diversity associated with spoiled FFV of which a large proportion were stored at room temperature, suggesting that a better usage of FFV refrigeration could help reduce FFV waste in households.