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Actor Ruthie Henshall has spoken about her happiness at being able to see her mother, Gloria, again in her care home after restrictions were eased two weeks ago. She can now go into the care home and feed her mother lunch, read to her, or sing her favourite songs. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, she said the improvement in her mum’s condition had been “incredible”.

They should still wear masks but no quarantines are necessary, the agency said in new guidance that cited growing data about the effectiveness of the shots.Americans who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can safely travel at home and abroad, as long as they take basic precautions like wearing masks, federal health officials announced on Friday, a long-awaited change from the dire government warnings that have kept many millions home for the past year.In announcing the change at a White House news conference, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stressed that they preferred that people avoid travel. But they said growing evidence of the real-world effectiveness of the vaccines — which have been given to more than 100 million Americans — suggested that inoculated people could do so “at low risk to themselves.”The shift in the C.D.C.’s official stance comes at a moment of both hope and peril in the pandemic. The pace of vaccinations has been rapidly accelerating across the country, and the number of deaths has been declining.Yet cases are increasing significantly in many states as new variants of the coronavirus spread through the country. Just last Monday, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, warned of a potential fourth wave if states and cities continued to loosen public health restrictions, telling reporters that she had feelings of “impending doom.”Some public health experts were surprised by Friday’s announcement and expressed concern that government was sending confusing signals to the public.“It’s a mix of ‘please don’t travel,’ at the same time this is easing travel for a subset of people,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. “I think it’s very confusing and goes counter to the message we heard earlier this week, to ‘stay put,’ ‘hold on,’ ‘be patient.’ And that worries me. Public health messaging has to be very clear, very consistent, and it has to be very simple.”Dr. Walensky herself seemed to acknowledge the apparent mixed messaging during Friday’s news conference. “The science shows us that getting fully vaccinated allows you to do more things safely, and it’s important for us to provide that guidance even in the context of rising cases,” she said.The travel industry welcomed the new guidance, hoping it might be the beginning of a turn of fortune for airlines, hotels and tourist destinations, which have suffered mounting losses for more than a year.“As travel comes back, U.S. jobs come back,” said Roger Dow, the chief executive of the U.S. Travel Association, an industry group, said in a statement.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention delivered a long-awaited change from the dire government warnings that have kept many millions home for the past year.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFederal officials remained adamant that people who have not been fully vaccinated should not travel at all, a position widely supported by public health experts.“If you are fully vaccinated, you can return to travel, but if you are not, there is still a lot of virus circulating and it is still a risky undertaking and you should defer until you get vaccinated or the situation improves,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.If unvaccinated people must travel, the C.D.C. recommends they be tested for coronavirus infection one to three days before their trip and again three to five days after it’s over. They should self-quarantine for seven days after a trip if they get tested and for 10 days if they do not get tested, the agency said.People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or two weeks after receiving the second dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shot. Some 58 million people in the U.S., 22 percent of the adult population, have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest numbers from the C.D.C.Scientists are still not certain whether vaccinated people may become infected, even briefly, and transmit the virus to others. A recent C.D.C. study suggested such cases might be rare, but until that question is resolved, many public health officials feel it is unwise to tell vaccinated Americans simply to do as they please. They say it is important for all vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, practice social distancing and take other precautions.Under the new C.D.C. guidance, fully vaccinated Americans who are traveling domestically do not need to be tested for the coronavirus or follow quarantine procedures at the destination or after returning home. When they travel abroad, they only need to get a coronavirus test or quarantine if the country they are going to requires it.However, the guidance says they must have a negative coronavirus test before boarding a flight back to the United States, and they should get tested again three to five days after their return.The recommendation is predicated on the idea that vaccinated people may still become infected with the virus. The C.D.C. also cited a lack of vaccine coverage in other countries, and concern about the potential introduction and spread of new variants of the virus that are more prevalent overseas.Most states have accelerated their timelines for opening vaccinations to all adults, as the pace of vaccinations across the country has been increasing. As of Friday, an average of nearly three million shots a day were being administered, according to data reported by the C.D.C.The new advice adds to C.D.C. recommendations issued in early March saying that fully vaccinated people may gather in small groups in private settings without masks or social distancing, and may visit with unvaccinated individuals from a single household as long as they are at low risk for developing severe disease if infected with the virus.Travel has already been increasing nationwide, as the weather warms and Americans grow fatigued with pandemic restrictions. Last Sunday was the busiest day at domestic airports since the pandemic began. According to the Transportation Security Administration, nearly 1.6 million people passed through the security checkpoints at American airports.But the industry’s concerns are far from over. The pandemic has also shown businesses large and small that their employees can often be just as productive working remotely as in face-to-face meetings. As a result, the airline and hotel industries expect it will be years before lucrative corporate travel recovers to prepandemic levels, leaving a gaping hole in revenues.And while leisure travel within the United States may be recovering steadily, airlines expect it will still take until 2023 or 2024 for passenger volumes to reach 2019 levels, according to Airlines for America, an industry group. The industry lost more than $35 billion last year and continues to lose tens of millions of dollars each day, the group said.Many countries, including those in the European Union, still block most Americans from coming. Some are starting to make exceptions for those who are vaccinated. As of March 26, fully vaccinated Americans who can present proof of vaccination can visit Iceland, for example, and avoid such restrictions as testing and quarantine, the country’s government saidThe C.D.C. on Thursday also issued more detailed technical instructions for cruise lines, requiring them to take steps to develop vaccination strategies and make plans for routine testing of crew members and daily reporting of Covid-19 cases before they can run simulated trial runs of voyages with volunteers, before taking on real passengers. The C.D.C.’s directives acknowledge that taking cruises “will always pose some risk of Covid-19 transmission.”Some destinations and cruise lines have already started requiring that travelers be fully vaccinated. The cruise line Royal Caribbean is requiring passengers and crew members 18 or older to be vaccinated in order to board its ships, as are Virgin Voyages, Crystal Cruises and others.For the moment, airlines are not requiring vaccinations for travel. But the idea has been much talked about in the industry.Niraj Chokshi contributed reporting.

Preclinical research from VCU Massey Cancer Center published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the combination of two existing drugs can exploit the metabolic “hunger” of a particularly aggressive type of neuroblastoma to kill cancer cells without inflicting too much collateral damage to healthy tissue.
Neuroblastoma — a type of cancer that strikes the nervous system of very young children — is one of the deadliest pediatric cancers. And children whose neuroblastoma overexpresses the gene MYCN tend to have the worst prognosis.
While medical advancements have led to high cure rates among pediatric blood cancers, neuroblastoma has proven much more challenging to treat, largely because the gene that makes this cancer so deadly is a tough one to target.
“MYCN is a transcription factor, and it’s very difficult to drug transcription factors,” said study senior author Anthony Faber, Ph.D., co-leader of the Developmental Therapeutics research program and Natalie N. and John R. Congdon, Sr. Endowed Chair of Cancer Research at VCU Massey Cancer Center and associate professor in the Philips Institute for Oral Health Research at the VCU School of Dentistry. “So, the next best thing is to target what MYCN does in the cell. One thing it does is to crank up metabolic activity — what it’s doing to keep the cell alive — and we can work that against itself.”
These neuroblastoma cells exist on the brink of metabolic overdrive, gobbling up energy stores as quickly as the cell can replenish them, so Faber’s team sought ways to push these cells over the edge, without harming normal cells in the process.
The researchers screened 20 metabolic drug combinations in cancer cells originating from nearly 1,000 different patients and found that neuroblastoma with high MYCN expression was particularly sensitive to a cocktail containing two drugs: phenformin and AZD3965.
Phenformin, which blocks complex I on the surface of mitochondria — the sub-cellular compartment where energy production occurs — was developed in 1957 to treat diabetes. Although the Food and Drug Administration took phenformin off the market in the 1970s following a string of deaths, it’s still in use elsewhere in the world and is starting to make a comeback in the U.S. as a cancer drug. Right now, phenformin is being tested in a phase I clinical trial for melanoma.
AZD3965, a much newer type of drug that blocks MCT1 rectors on the surface of cells, is also under phase I clinical investigation, in this case as a treatment for many different types of cancer. MCT1 receptors ferry lactate — another source of energy — out of the cell. But when MCT1 is blocked and lactate accumulates, the cell stops using it to make energy.
Since the receptors targeted by phenformin and AZD3965 participate in energy production through two distinct pathways, blocking them both at once should dramatically disrupt the cellular power supply, leading to stress and ultimately cell death.
Faber’s team tested this idea by using mice seeded with MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma patient cells and found that animals treated with both drugs saw greater tumor shrinkage than animals given either drug alone, and the cocktail was well tolerated.
“The data we got with AZD3965 in combination with phenformin might get people to reconsider phenformin,” said study lead author Krista Dalton, M.Eng., a Ph.D. student in the VCU Philips Institute for Oral Health Research. “In combination, where we can use lower doses, phenformin might have better tolerability than it previously did on its own.”
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Materials provided by Virginia Commonwealth University. Original written by Erin Hare. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

In a new study, researchers identify three clinical COVID-19 phenotypes, reflecting patient populations with different comorbidities, complications and clinical outcomes. The three phenotypes are described in a paper published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by first authors Elizabeth Lusczek and Nicholas Ingraham of University of Minnesota Medical School, US, and colleagues.
COVID-19 has infected more than 18 million people and led to more than 700,000 deaths around the world. Emergency department presentation varies widely, suggesting that distinct clinical phenotypes exist and, importantly, that these distinct phenotypic presentations may respond differently to treatment.
In the new study, researchers analyzed electronic health records (EHRs) from 14 hospitals in the midwestern United States and from 60 primary care clinics in the state of Minnesota. Data were available for 7,538 patients with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 between March 7 and August 25, 2020; 1,022 of these patients required hospital admission and were included in the study. Data on each patient included comorbidities, medications, lab values, clinic visits, hospital admission information, and patient demographics.
Most patients included in the study (613 patients, or 60 percent) presented with what the researchers dubbed “phenotype II.” 236 patients (23.1 percent) presented with “phenotype I,” or the “Adverse phenotype,” which was associated with the worst clinical outcomes; these patients had the highest level of hematologic, renal and cardiac comorbidities (all p

A team led by scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has identified nine potential new COVID-19 treatments, including three that are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating other diseases.
The team, whose findings were published in Cell Reports, screened thousands of existing drugs and drug-like molecules for their ability to inhibit the replication of the COVID-19-causing coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. In contrast to many prior studies, the screens tested the molecules for anti-coronaviral activity in a variety of cell types, including human airway-lining cells that are similar to the ones principally affected in COVID-19.
Of the nine drugs found to reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication in respiratory cells, three already have FDA approval: the transplant-rejection drug cyclosporine, the cancer drug dacomitinib, and the antibiotic salinomycin. These could be rapidly tested in human volunteers and COVID-19 patients.
The experiments also shed light on key processes the coronavirus uses to infect different cells and found that the antiviral drug remdesivir, which has an FDA Emergency Use Authorization for treating COVID-19, does appear to work against the virus in cell-culture tests on respiratory cells, whereas hydroxychloroquine does not.
“Our discoveries here suggest new avenues for therapeutic interventions against COVID-19, and also underscore the importance of testing candidate drugs in respiratory cells,” said co-senior author Sara Cherry, PhD, a professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and scientific director of the High-Throughput Screening (HTS) Core at Penn Medicine.
Study collaborators included co-senior authors David Schultz, PhD, technical director of the HTS Core, and Holly Ramage, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology & immunology at Thomas Jefferson University.

Wearing a face mask can protect yourself and others from Covid-19, but the type of material and how many fabric layers used can significantly affect exposure risk, finds a study from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The study measured the filtration efficiency of submicron particles passing through a variety of different materials. For comparison, a human hair is about 50 microns in diameter while 1 millimeter is 1,000 microns in size.
“A submicron particle can stay in the air for hours and days, depending on the ventilation, so if you have a room that is not ventilated or poorly ventilated then these small particles can stay there for a very long period of time,” said Nga Lee (Sally) Ng, associate professor and Tanner Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
The study was conducted during spring 2020, when the pandemic triggered a global shutdown of most institutions. Communities faced massive shortages of personal protective equipment, prompting many people to make their own homemade masks. Georgia Tech quickly set up the study since it already had “a great system for testing filtration efficiency using existing instruments in the lab,” Ng recalled.
The study’s findings were used to shape homemade face mask recommendations here (https://sites.gatech.edu/rapid-response/face-masks/) last April, with the comprehensive study findings published on March 22 in the journal Aerosol Science and Technology.
In all, the researchers tested 33 different commercially accessible materials not limited to cloth fabrics, including single-layer woven fabrics such as cotton and woven polyester, blended fabrics, nonwoven materials, cellulose-based materials, materials commonly found and used in hospitals, and various filter materials.

Insights from behavioral economics and other fields suggest strategies that could increase participation in mass screening programs.In October, Dr. Folasade May, an internist and public health researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, began a new workplace routine. Once a week, she would make the three-minute walk from her office to a campus coronavirus testing site. After having her temperature checked and scanning a bar code on her phone, she would carefully swab the inside of her nose. Within a day or two, an email would arrive with her results.Week after week, her results came back negative. She continued to participate in the testing program even after being vaccinated, and she continued to test negative. And then, two weeks ago, an email landed in her inbox that stunned her: Her sample was positive for the coronavirus.The result — which turned out to be a false positive — briefly threw her life into chaos.“Our whole family was turned upside-down for an afternoon trying to figure out how to separate ourselves in our small house, trying to figure out who’s going to take care of the kids and who else did we expose,” Dr. May said.It is a situation that other families may soon find themselves in as mass coronavirus screening programs ramp up in schools and workplaces. Some of these programs will make testing mandatory, but many others will rely on voluntary participation — or on people regularly self-administering tests in their own homes.The more people who participate, the more effective these programs will be at slowing the spread of the virus, and keeping tabs on it. But there are also clear disincentives to participating, ranging from inconvenience to anxiety over the consequences of a positive result, which can mean missing work, keeping a child home from school or days of quarantine.“There are huge implications of a positive Covid test that a lot of people are very wary of, especially if they’re feeling well,” said Dr. May, who studies health disparities and the barriers to accessing health care. “I don’t know that people are going to come out in droves to get it done.”Although coronavirus screening is new, researchers in several fields — including behavioral economics, implementation science and health psychology — have spent years studying how to encourage people to engage in other kinds of health-related behaviors, including cancer screening, H.I.V. testing and vaccination. Some of these same strategies, they say, could help health officials design coronavirus screening programs, or even vaccination programs, with better participation rates.“The reality is that people are going to have to wake up and decide whether this is something they intend to do on any given day or any given week,” said Harsha Thirumurthy, associate director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. “And we know — from lots of examples of people’s decisions to seek testing for other health conditions, or even people’s decisions to engage in other health-related behaviors — that people are constantly weighing the costs and benefits of engaging in these services.”Here are five ways that health officials say can help shift the calculus.Make it easyHumans have a bias toward the status quo, a tendency to want to keep things as they are rather than shake them up. Many studies have shown that people are more likely to engage in various behaviors, from becoming an organ donor to enrolling in a 401(k) plan, when those behaviors are presented as the default choice.In a randomized clinical trial of nearly 5,000 emergency room patients, researchers found that the share of patients who were willing to take a rapid H.I.V. test climbed to 66 percent from 38 percent when the test was presented as a medical service they had to deliberately decline, rather than one they had to proactively ask for.Similarly, coronavirus screening programs are more likely to see wider participation if they are opt-out rather than opt-in. “The more you ask people to put in their own cognitive efforts and behavioral efforts into this, the less likely they’re going to do it,” said Derek Reed, who directs the applied behavioral economics laboratory at the University of Kansas.And, of course, the actual testing process should be quick and convenient, experts say, with strategically located testing sites and streamlined procedures that allow people to easily incorporate testing into their routines.Ask people to planExperts also suggested asking people to think through the logistics of when and how they plan to get tested. Studies show that people who clearly formulate a plan for how they intend to accomplish something — whether it’s voting in an upcoming election or getting a flu vaccine — are more likely to follow-through.One possibility, Dr. Reed said, would be to text people reminders of their testing appointments, and ask them to reply with, say, a 1 if they plan to walk to the appointment, a 2 if they plan to drive or a 3 if they plan to take the bus. “And then depending on the response, you just automatically ping back Google map directions or a link to campus or community bus system maps or timetables,” he said.These kinds of nudges are likely to be most effective for people who are already motivated to get tested but may have trouble following through. “Often you need to nudge them a little bit by just removing frictions to get rid of these small costs,” said Sebastian Linnemayr, a behavioral economist at the RAND Corporation, a think tank in California.Provide (the right) incentivesHealth officials could also reward people who participate in testing programs. “There probably needs to be some sort of incentive at the patient level,” Dr. May said. “We’ve seen the same thing in cancer screening. We’ve seen health insurers provide incentives to patients to participate in healthy lifestyles, to participate in screening measures.”But the specific incentives matter, and some studies suggest that people are more motivated by an opportunity to win a large reward than the guarantee of a smaller payout.In a November survey of 200 undergraduate students at the University of Kansas, Dr. Reed and his colleagues found that 70 percent of them said they would be willing to get tested if the university gave them a $5 gift card. But if the university instead entered them in a lottery, in which they had a 5 percent chance of winning $100, 88 percent said they would participate, said Dr. Reed, who shared his findings with the university.These kinds of lotteries may be effective because people tend to overestimate their chances of winning them. “The other part of it is that the lottery does introduce an element of fun or engagement in this idea that you’re part of something that other people are also participating in,” Dr. Thirumurthy said.Leverage social tiesPeer pressure can be a powerful public health tool; research has shown, for instance, that college women are more willing to get the human papillomavirus vaccine if they believe that their peers are also doing so.Government, school and workplace leaders can help coronavirus testing become a social norm by making it public how many others are participating. “Then, send out that information over and over again: ‘Don’t be left out, 85 percent already got tested and are making the school a better place,’” Dr. Linnemayr said. He added, “It’s really important that you signal, ‘This is an activity that we, as a community, value and reward.’”Health officials could also consider leveraging social networks more explicitly. In a randomized trial conducted in Kenya, Dr. Thirumurthy found that providing women with two H.I.V. self-testing kits, and encouraging them to give one to their male partners, significantly increased the share of men tested for H.I.V.He is now working with colleagues to evaluate a similar program for the coronavirus, asking people to distribute self-testing kits to others in their social circles.“Who has the strongest ability to persuade you to test?” Dr. Thirumurthy said. “Is it going to be your employer or somebody in the community? Or is it going to be someone who is a close friend or a family member?”Support people who test positiveEven the cleverest nudges, however, will not be enough to convince people to get tested if they think a positive result will have a devastating effect on their lives. A major barrier to H.I.V. testing has been the fear among potential recipients that testing positive would cost them their friends, jobs, housing or health insurance.A positive coronavirus test doesn’t necessarily carry the same stigma, but it can still have serious ripple effects on people’s lives. “If it keeps you out of work and you can’t earn an income to support your family, that’s a non-starter for a lot of people,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University.So governments, employers and community organizations should do what they can to reduce the costs associated with testing positive, health experts said. That could mean providing paid leave or allowing employees to work remotely if they must quarantine; offering hotel vouchers so people have a safe place to isolate; or offering financial and food assistance. Such services can “soften the blow” of testing positive, Dr. Thirumurthy said: “There needs to be some type of safety net.”

WEHI researchers have discovered a key differentiation process that provides an essential immune function in helping to control cancer and infectious diseases.
The research, published in Science Immunology, is the first to show a new factor — DC-SCRIPT — is required for the function a particular type of dendritic cell — called cDC1 — that is essential in controlling the immune response to infection.
Led by WEHI Professor Stephen Nutt, Dr Michael Chopin and Mr Shengbo Zhang, it defines the role for a new regulatory protein — DC-SCRIPT — in producing dendritic cells.
At a glance WEHI researchers have uncovered a key step in the formation of a particular type of dendritic cell — called cDC1 — in controlling the immune response to infection. The research highlights the importance of DC-SCRIPT in the production of effective dendritic cells. Through gaining a better understanding of how dendritic cells are produced, researchers hope to be able to determine a way of directing the body to produce large numbers of dendritic cells, to enable it to better fight off cancer and infections.DC-SCRIPT essential in the production of cancer-fighting cells
Dendritic cells are immune cells that activate ‘killer’ T cells, which are vital for clearing viral infections and for triggering a response to cancer tumours.

If you walk with your spouse or partner on a regular basis, you might want to speed up. Or tell them to.
A new study by Purdue University nursing, health and kinesiology, and human development and family studies researchers shows that couples often decreased their speed when walking together. Speed further decreased if they were holding hands.
The study looked at walking times and gait speeds of 141 individuals from 72 couples. The participants ranged from age 25-79 and were in numerous settings, including clear or obstacle-filled pathways, walking together, walking together holding hands and walking individually.
“In our study, we focused on couples because partners in committed relationships often provide essential support to promote one another’s healthy lifestyle behaviors, including exercise,” says Melissa Franks, associate professor of human development and family studies.
Libby Richards, associate professor of nursing, says, “We were hoping that there would not be a reduction in speed where partners walked together. We hoped that slower partners would speed up to match the faster partner, but that was not the case. However, it’s important to note that any physical activity or walking — regardless of speed — is better than none.”
Richards says it is common for people to walk or exercise with a spouse, partner or friend, as it increases one’s likelihood to be active, especially as Americans are encouraged to meet a goal of 150 minutes of moderate activity every week.
“If someone substantially slows down when they are walking with someone else, that could negate some of the health benefits recognized if they walked alone at a faster pace,” Richards says.
Shirley Rietdyk, professor of health and kinesiology who specializes in biomechanics, says there are many reasons to measure gait speed.
“Gait speed is important to measure because it is related to overall health. Typical gait speed is predictive of fall risk, functional ability, disability recovery and mortality,” Rietdyk says.
“Common exercise interventions, including strength, coordination and multimodal training, are all effective in increasing gait speed. These interventions can also delay the onset of slower gait speed and help slow the loss of gait speed. No one type of training is better than the other, so do the activity you are most likely to stick with.”
While walking is one of the easiest activities, people tend to walk slower as they get older and may have to find other fitness routines to stay active.
“Older adults who are more active tend to maintain their gait speed,” Rietdyk says. “In other words, slower gait speed is not an inevitable aspect of aging. Older adults who walk slower tend to have poorer health and lower functional status.”
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Materials provided by Purdue University. Original written by Matthew Oates. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Understanding what drives food choices can help high-volume food service operations like universities reduce waste, according to a new study.
Researchers have concluded that food waste in places like university cafeterias is driven by how much people put on their plates, how familiar they are with what’s on the menu and how much they like — or don’t like — what they’re served.
Food waste has been studied often in households, but not so often in institutional settings like university dining commons. What drives food choices in these “all-you-care-to-eat” facilities is different because diners don’t perceive personal financial penalty if they leave food on their plates.
Published in the journal Foods, “Food Choice and Waste in University Dining Commons — A Menus of Change University Research Collaborative Study” was conducted by a team of experts from Rice University; the University of California, Davis; Stanford University; Lebanon Valley College; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of California, Berkeley.
Co-author Eleanor Putnam-Farr, assistant marketing professor at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, is available to discuss the findings and potential impact with news media.
The researchers conducted student surveys during the 2019 spring and fall semesters to study foods types, diner confidence and diner satisfaction. They used photos taken by diners themselves before and after eating to measure how much food was taken and how much of it went to waste. “Diners were intercepted at their dining halls and asked if they wanted to participate in a study about food choices and satisfaction, but the objective of investigating food waste behavior was not disclosed,” the authors wrote.
The study found the amount of food wasted didn’t significantly differ among types of food. Instead, researchers discovered waste was related to the amount of food diners put on their plates, how satisfied they were with their meals and how often they went to the dining commons. If students were satisfied with their food, they tended waste less of it. And diners who visited the commons most often — making them more familiar with the menus and more confident in their choices — tended to waste less.
Mixed dishes, like sandwiches or stir-fry, took up a greater percentage of the surface area on surveyed plates than animal proteins or grains and starches. Those three types of food took up a greater area of the plates than fruits, vegetables or plant proteins. The amount of food wasted, however, did not significantly differ among the various food categories.
The mixed dishes and animal proteins that took up greater portions of the plate tended to be pre-plated by the commons staff or have a suggested serving size. The study’s results showed that greater amounts of food taken by diners correlated with the item being pre-plated or served by others.
The authors recommend future research on the topic uses their multicampus approach — which enabled them to study food choice among a large and diverse group — to better understand what causes food waste and find out if it can be reduced by interventions such as posting signs that encourage healthier choices.
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Materials provided by Rice University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.