Improving dietary knowledge has the potential to prevent obesity and overweight and, if effective, is a highly feasible policy measure. This paper proposes a new framework to examine the effects of dietary knowledge on nutrient intake and diet quality. The framework allows the effects to differ by one's expectation about food availability (EFA). Using data from China, we find that dietary knowledge affects mainly the quantity of diet (e.g., lowering total calorie intake) when EFA is increasing, while it affects mainly the quality of diet (e.g., lowering the share of calories from oils) when EFA is decreasing. The effect on the quantity is larger among overweight adults, while the effect on the quality is more significant among non-overweight adults. Without distinguishing the direction of changes in EFA as in previous studies, the estimated effects of dietary knowledge tend to be smaller. Thus, as an anti-obesity measure, dietary education may be more effective than indicated by previous studies under the situations where EFA increases (e.g., introducing food coupons), while only marginally effective under the situations where EFA decreases (e.g., increasing real food prices). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We incorporate habit formation into an analysis of the effect or cereal price changes on the nutrient intake of the poor in China. We find that the poor's nutrient intake responds asymmetrically to declines and increases in cereal prices, and that the asymmetric response of their fat intake may be due to habit formation. Our results also imply that introducing cereal price subsidies can increase their total energy intake by increasing their calorie intake from fat and protein, while ending such subsidies would insignificantly affect their total energy intake, but further increase their calorie intake from fat and protein. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

To analyze intrahousehold calorie allocation, we propose a new framework that takes into account asymmetric consumption behavior due to liquidity constraints and loss aversion We find that intrahousehold calorie allocation responds asymmetrically to expected declines and increases in household food availability in China Compared with previous studies based on symmetric consumption behavior, our framework provides stronger evidence of gender bias in intrahousehold calorie allocation among children in urban areas and among elderly people in rural areas, and of demographic bias between girls and prime-age adults in both urban and rural areas. Implications for demographic targeting in nutrition programs are discussed

We analyze the effects of improving the economic, food security and health status on the risk of armed cotntectflict onset, focusing on the factors related to the millennium development goals. We employ the discrete-time hazard model that allows us to examine the time-varying effects of socioeconomic factors controlling for the reverse effect of conflict. Our results show that income poverty and poor health and nutritional status are more significantly associated with armed conflict onset than GDP per capita, annual GDP growth. and the ratio of primary commodity exports over GDP. In particular, poor health and nutritional status seems to play a key role in inducing armed conflicts in Poor Countries. These results indicate that, when a majority of the poor and the malnourished resides in rural areas and depends on agriculture directly or indirectly, investments in public goods for agriculture and rural areas can be effective tools to achieve the multiple goals of reduced poverty, food security and armed conflict, including riots in early 2008 triggered by high food prices. Food policy can be an effective element of efforts to maintain stability. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A major concern for international marketers is how products will be received by foreign consumers in other markets. This study uses choice modeling to assess Chinese consumer preferences for pork and evaluate the potential demand for U.S. pork in the cities of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. We find that differences in preferences for domestic versus imported pork can be explained, in part, by consumers' level of patriotism. Marketing pork with a food safety claim can increase market demand for U.S. products, and accounting for differences in nationalistic attitudes can aid marketing efforts.

By conducting a meta-analysis with 57 observations collected from 20 primary studies, we systematically analyze heterogeneities in consumer preferences for the Country-of-Origin-Labeling (COOL) of US beef products. We find that consumers often prefer their domestic beef products due to patriotism. Consumers in Asian (mainly, Korea and Japan) and European countries (such as France, Germany and UK) are willing to pay significantly lower prices for US beef products compared to their domestic products; while the US consumers are willing to pay more for the domestic products than the imported ones.

Sustainable meat consumption is critical to achieve a sustainable food system because meat products are among the most energy-intensive, ecologically burdensome, and ethically concerned foods. This paper focuses on the case of China and discusses the difficulties and possibilities to achieve sustainable meat consumption in China by reviewing previous empirical studies and descriptive statistics, particularly considering consumers' dietary transitions in quantity and quality following China's rapid economic growth. Given China's sheer size of population and meat demand, the sustainable meat consumption in China is also a relevant topic in the global food system.

Objective: To investigate the difference in the prevalence of obesity and the associations between the risk of obesity and socioeconomic factors with regard to working adults in China and Taiwan. Data: the 2000 China Health and Nutrition Survey and the 2001 National Health Interview Survey in Taiwan, which contains information from 20-60-year-old working adults in China (3,067 men and 2,998 women) and Taiwan (6,475 men and 6,341 women). Method: Variables were converted to cross-economy comparable forms, and the estimated prevalence of obesity across socioeconomic groups was compared between China and Taiwan. Probit models were used to examine the associations between socioeconomic factors and the probability of being obese. Results: In China, the prevalence of obesity was higher in the higher income, more educated, and more sedentary occupation groups, while it was higher in the lower income and less educated groups in Taiwan. Also, our results indicate that occupational types rather than income and education levels are more significantly associated with the probability of being obese in China, whereas income and education levels rather than occupational types are more significantly associated with the probability of being obese in Taiwan. These findings may indicate that, when an economy becomes more developed, the association between obesity risk and income and education levels becomes more significant and negative especially among women, while the association between obesity risk and occupational types decreases especially among men.

While a positive wage effect of Body Mass Index (BMI) is widely observed in low-income developing countries, a negative wage effect of BMI is often observed in high-income developed countries. To fill the gap between these previous findings, we investigate the relationship between body weight and wages in transition economies. We focus on China, whose rapid economic growth of the 1990s was followed by a rapid increase in overweight and obesity while still experiencing significant food insecurity and underweight. we first use several parametric regression strategies to obtain a consistent estimate of the wage effects of weight. Second, we adopt a semiparametric partially linear model that allows for endogeneity of weight. Parametric regressions provide mixed results, and the sign and magnitude of their estimates are sensitive to the choice of samples and regression strategies. Semiparametric estimates provide evidence of a wage penalty for very heavy and thin persons among both men and women. The wage penalty is more significant among men than among women. Semiparametric results also indicate that parametric estimates can overstate and misrepresent the wage effects of weight for healthy weight persons due to their restrictive functional form assumptions.