Britta Renner

Universität Konstanz | Uni-Konstanz · Department of Psychology

Research suggests that “healthy” food choices such as eating fruits and vegetables have not only physical but also mental health benefits and might be a long-term investment in future well-being. This view contrasts with the belief that high-caloric foods taste better, make us happy, and alleviate a negative mood. To provide a more comprehensive as...

Background: Dietary guidelines typically specify rather complex goals and indicators for healthy food choices, such as nutrient and energy content patterns. However, translating these complex goals into practice in real life is often a major obstacle for many people. The present studies propose an intervention strategy for boosting healthy food ch...

A systematic review and meta‐analysis were conducted to assess the effectiveness of app‐based mobile interventions for improving nutrition behaviours and nutrition‐related health outcomes, including obesity indices (eg, body mass index [BMI]) and clinical parameters (eg, blood lipids). Seven databases were searched for studies published between 200...

How we eat has a major impact on our individual health status, our quality of life and our wellbeing. Many of the foods we eat have a major social, environmental, climate and animal welfare footprint. This expertise defines policies to promote sustainability in food consumption as policies that integrate all four target dimensions: human health, so...

Background Inequalities in health and wealth distributions are becoming pressing societal problems in many countries. How these inequalities are perceived and to what degree perceptions are aligned with actual distributions, is important for trust in public health services, social and economic policies, and policymakers. This study aims to assess p...

Manually coding behaviours from videos is essential to study animal behaviour but it is labour-intensive and susceptible to inter-rater bias and reliability issues. Recent developments of computer vision tools enable the automatic quantification of behaviours, supplementing or even replacing manual annotations. However, widespread adoption of these...

BACKGROUND Many mobile health (mHealth) apps focus on promoting physical activity (PA) and healthy eating (HE). However, there is limited empirical evidence regarding their effectiveness in initiating and sustaining behavior change, particularly among children and adolescents. Considering that behavior is influenced by social contexts, it is essent...

Background Numerous smartphone apps are targeting physical activity (PA) and healthy eating (HE), but empirical evidence on their effectiveness for the initialization and maintenance of behavior change, especially in children and adolescents, is still limited. Social settings influence individual behavior; therefore, core settings such as the famil...

Research has found an association between the perceived sustainability and healthiness of foods and meals between individual consumers. The current study aimed to investigate whether the association between perceived sustainability and healthiness on the individual level is rooted in reality. Moreover, we investigated whether meal or individual cha...

Context Overweight and obesity have become a major health burden with a higher prevalence of obesity in women than in men. Mental stress has been discussed to play a role in this context. Objective We investigated endocrine mechanisms underlying eating after acute psychosocial stress and potential gender differences therein. Methods 32 male and 3...

BACKGROUND Numerous smartphone applications (apps) are targeting physical activity (PA) and/or healthy eating (HE), but empirical evidence on their effectiveness for initialization and maintenance of behavior change, especially in children and adolescents is still limited. Individuals’ behavior is embedded in social settings, therefore, core settin...

Nearly all approaches to personalized nutrition (PN) use information such as the gene variants of individuals to deliver advice that is more beneficial than a generic one-size-fits-all recommendation. Despite great enthusiasm and the increased availability of commercial services, thus far, scientific studies have only revealed small to negligible e...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effect of a food-inspired multimedia intervention on children’s fruits and vegetables (F&V) consumption in a real-life setting during lunch. Design Children in an elementary school in Bologna (Italy) in third, fourth and fifth grade, aged between 9 and 12 years old, were examined ( N = 171). Two different typ...

Nearly all approaches for personalized nutrition (PN) use information, such as the gene variants of individuals, to deliver advice considered more beneficial than generic one-size-fits-all recommendations. Despite great enthusiasm and the increased availability of commercial services, thus far, scientific studies reveal only small to negligible eff...

Zusammenfassung Von 2014 bis 2022 fördert das BMBF fünf Forschungsverbünde der Präventionsforschung und Gesundheitsförderung, die ebenfalls über eine gemeinsame Koordination verfügen (Forschungsnetzwerk Primärprävention und Gesundheitsförderung, www.fp2g.net). Die Forschenden haben eine Vielzahl relevanter Forschungsergebnisse erarbeitet und Erkenn...

Background The present study aimed to investigate how often and to what degree older adults living in an area of Gujarat, Western India, enact traditional and modern eating behaviors. Specifically, we aimed to determine which facets of traditional eating are enacted rarely and which facets of modern eating are enacted often. Moreover, we hypothesiz...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund In Kommunen wird die Gesundheit der Bewohner*innen durch Lebensumstände geschützt, gefördert oder gefährdet. Kommunale Gesundheitsförderung (KoGeFö) findet in und mit der Kommune statt. In der Kommune konzentrieren sich Programme und Maßnahmen auf Endpunkte der Morbidität und Mortalität. Die Krankheitslast soll reduzier...

Background: In times of unprecedented infectious disease threats, it is essential to understand how to increase individual protective behaviors and support for collective measures. The present study therefore examines factors associated with individual and collective pathways. Methods: Data was collected via an online survey from 4,483 participants...

Food cultures can play a role in health and well-being. This raises the questions of whether nation boundaries unite the food cultures of different regions and ethnic groups, what characterises food cultures from very different parts of the world, and what similarities and differences exist. The present study aimed to investigate these questions wi...

Background Sugar overconsumption is a major contributor to overweight and obesity, with daily consumption greatly exceeding the WHO’s recommendations. The aim of the present study was to determine whether using a functionally modified sugar shaker as a food environment nudge could be an effective means to reduce the sugar used in hot beverages. Me...

Resumo: Este trabalho pretende analisar os cidadãos que viviam em Portugal durante a pandemia COVID-19 2020/2021, a saúde subjetiva, o risco percebido e a perceção relacionada com o surto, a motivação para a proteção e adoção de comportamentos preventivos, e suas expetativas de futuro. Foram incluídos 225 indivíduos, 81,3% do sexo feminino (18-83 a...

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, public perceptions and behaviours have had to adapt rapidly to new risk scenarios and radical behavioural restrictions. Aim To identify major drivers of acceptance of protective behaviours during the 4-week transition from virtually no COVID-19 cases to the nationwide lockdown in Germany (3–25 March 2020)....

The present study examined the relationship between risk experience and risk perceptions in relation to the target (risk to the self vs. others) and for two different types of risk: acute risks (i.e., terrorist attacks) and cumulative health risks (i.e., alcohol consumption, tobacco consumption, and unhealthy eating) in two countries (Israel and Ge...

Background The outbreak and global spread of COVID-19 was accompanied by an increase in reports of stigmatization of Chinese and Asian-looking people. The behavioral immune system provides a framework for stigmatization in response to infectious disease threats. Specifically, stigmatization might increase with rising levels of infectious disease th...

Background: Nutrition apps are effective in changing eating behavior and diet-related health risk factors. However, while they may curb growing overweight and obesity rates, widespread adoption is yet to be achieved. Hence, profound knowledge regarding factors motivating and hindering (long-term) nutrition app use is crucial for developing design...

Background Since humans are social animals, social relations are incredibly important. However, in cases of contagious diseases such as the flu, social contacts also pose a health risk. According to prominent health behavior change theories, perceiving a risk for one’s health motivates precautionary behaviors. The “behavioral immune system” approac...

Zusammenfassung Von 2014 bis 2022 erforschen die 5 deutschen Forschungsverbünde AEQUIPA, CAPITAL4HEALTH, HLCA, PartKommPlus und SMARTACT Themen der Primärprävention und Gesundheitsförderung mit dem Ziel, die Evidenzgrundlagen in diesen Bereichen weiterzuentwickeln. In diesem Beitrag wird die Arbeit der 5 Forschungsverbünde für Primärprävention und...

Public health campaigns often encourage people to increase the consumption of vegetables and fruits while limiting sugar, fat, and salt intake. Furthermore, recent approaches increasingly suggest accumulating small behavioral shifts to change eating behavior. However, when individuals actually do notice a positive change in their diet behavior has...

Research shows that retrospective memory is often more extreme than in-the-moment experiences. While investigations into this phenomenon have mostly focused on distinct, one-time experiences, we examined it with respect to recurring day-to-day experiences in the eating domain, focusing on variables of the snapshot model—i.e., the most intense and t...

Aufgrund technologischer Entwicklungen hat sich die Gesundheitskommunikation in den letzten Jahrzehnten grundlegend verändert – von einer eindimensionalen hin zu einer interaktiven und multidirektionalen Kommunikation. Das vorliegende Kapitel zielt darauf ab, die Bedeutung von Gesundheitskommunikation für Prävention und Gesundheitsförderung wie auc...

Although most people are aware of the health benefits of consuming sufficient amounts of fruit and vegetables, many do not adhere to current dietary recommendations. Recent studies have suggested meal colour variety as an intuitive cue for healthy and enjoyable lunch meal choices. The present study extends this research by testing the “colourful =...

Infectious diseases pose a serious threat to humans. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how accurately people perceive these risks. However, accuracy can be operationalized differently depending on the standard of comparison. The present study investigated accuracy in risk perceptions for three infectious diseases (avian influenza, seasonal inf...

To contain the spread of Covid-19, engagement in protective behaviors across the population is of great importance. The present study investigated protective behavior intentions during the early phases of Covid-19 in Germany (February 2–April 3, 2020) as a function of threat level and age using data from 4,940 participants in the EUCLID project. Re...

Introduction How do people receive unexpected positive health risk information? While common motivational accounts predict acceptance, consistency accounts such as the cue-adaptive reasoning account (CARA) predict a ‘lack of reassurance’. Objectives We therefore tested (1) whether people prefer striving for positivity or retaining a sense of self-...

An introduction to dietary and health changes focusing on the traditional and the modern. ■ A discussion of what traditional and modern eating are. ■ Dimensions “what people eat” and “how people eat”. ■ Sub-dimensions of “what people eat”: ingredients, processing, preparation, temporal origin, spatial origin and variety. ■ Sub-dimensions of “how pe...

Background: Numerous smartphone apps are targeting physical activity and healthy eating, but empirical evidence on their effectiveness for initialization and maintenance of behavior change, especially in children and adolescents, is still limited. Objectives: The aim was to conceptualize a theory-based and evidence-based mHealth intervention called...

Die Art und Weise, wie wir uns ernähren, beeinflusst wesentlich unseren individuellen Gesundheitsstatus, unsere Lebensqualität und unser Wohlbefinden. Viele Lebensmittel tragen einen großen sozialen, umwelt-, klima- und tierschutzbezogenen Fußabdruck. Politik für nachhaltigere Ernährung ist in diesem Gutachten definiert als eine Politik, die alle v...

Comparing data distributions is a core focus in descriptive statistics, and part of most data analysis processes across disciplines. In particular, comparing distributions entails numerous tasks, ranging from identifying global distribution properties, comparing aggregated statistics (e.g., mean values), to the local inspection of single cases. Whi...

Objective: While behavioral recommendations regarding physical activity commonly focus on reaching demanding goals by proposing “thresholds,” little attention has been paid to the question of how much of a behavioral change is needed to make people feel that they have changed. The present research investigated this relation between actual and felt...

Background While short-term experiments have found that exposure to social contacts affects likeability, this study investigates its long-term effects on friendships in an emerging network. Methods One hundred psychology freshmen indicated whether they attended an introductory event before the start of the academic year to assess early exposure an...

Objectives Two distinct lines of research separately regard either deliberately regulated eating or intuitive eating as most beneficial for health. The present research aims to integrate these seemingly contradictory findings by investigating the relationships between Preference for Intuition and Deliberation in Eating Decision‐making (E‐PID) and s...

Forecasting how we will react in the future is important in every area of our lives. However, people often demonstrate an “impact bias” which leads them to inaccurately forecast their affective reactions to distinct and outstanding future events. The present study examined forecasting accuracy for a day-to-day repetitive experience for which people...

BACKGROUND Numerous smartphone applications (app) are targeting physical activity (PA) and/or healthy eating (HE), but empirical evidence on their effectiveness for initialization and maintenance of behavior change, especially in children and adolescents is still limited. Individuals’ behavior is embedded in social settings, therefore, core setting...

Background Numerous smartphone apps are targeting physical activity and healthy eating, but empirical evidence on their effectiveness for initialization and maintenance of behavior change, especially in children and adolescents, is still limited. Objective The aim of this study was to conceptualize a theory-based and evidence-based mHealth interve...

BACKGROUND Nutrition apps are a prototypical mobile health (mHealth) technology supporting healthy eating behavior that are seen as promising tools for health promotion by policy makers. Although nutrition apps are increasingly popular, wide-spread adoption is yet to be achieved. Hence, profound knowledge regarding factors motivating and hindering...

In older adults, the relationship between healthy eating motivation (HEM) and protein intake as key component of a healthy diet is poorly understood. Therefore, we investigate the association of HEM with (1) total protein intake and (2) intake of different protein sources in older adults with varying functional status. In this cross-sectional study...

Background: Why do we eat? Our motives for eating are diverse, ranging from hunger and liking to social norms and affect regulation. Although eating motives can vary from eating event to eating event, which implies substantial moment-to-moment differences, current ways of measuring eating motives rely on single timepoint questionnaires that assess...

Mass media messaging is central for health communication. The success of these efforts, however, depends on whether health messages resonate with their target audiences. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to capture brain responses of young adults - an important target group for alcohol prevention - while they viewed real-life video message...

Across the world, there has been a movement from traditional to modern eating, including a movement of traditional eating patterns from their origin culture to new cultures, and the emergence of new foods and eating behaviors. This trend toward modern eating is of particular significance because traditional eating has been related to positive healt...

Context The Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone-System (RAAS) plays an important role in cardiovascular homeostasis and its dysfunction relates to negative health consequences. Acute psychosocial stress seems to activate the RAAS in humans, but stress kinetics and interrelations of RAAS parameters as compared to a non-stress control group remain inconclu...

Brazil is undergoing a rapid nutrition transition with unfavorable effects on dietary healthiness. To counteract this trend, knowledge about individual drivers of consumption is needed that go beyond environmental factors. The Eating Motivation Survey represents a comprehensive measure of such individual drivers, assessing 15 eating motives, such a...

In order to adhere to dietary guidelines and manage health risks, consumers need to be able to estimate with some accuracy the sugar and energy content of foods. The present study compared how well participants could estimate the sugar and energy content of foods, the weight of foods, and approximate portion size (using a hand measure estimation ai...

Background: Physical activity and healthy nutrition are commonly known as core facets of health. However, recent studies confirm a lack of these aspects in today’s society. With most people lacking time for exercise and cooking, m-health applications may be the means of choice to promote healthier lifestyles. The current study aimed to develop a sm...

BACKGROUND Establishing a methodology to assess nutritional behavior comprehensively and accurately is extremely challenging. Mobile technologies such as mobile applications (apps) enable eating events to be assessed in-the-moment in real-time, which reduces the memory biases that are inherent in retrospective food records. However, users might fin...

Background: Establishing a methodology for assessing nutritional behavior comprehensively and accurately poses a great challenge. Mobile technologies such as mobile image-based food recording apps enable eating events to be assessed in the moment in real time, thereby reducing memory biases inherent in retrospective food records. However, users mi...

Pratiquement aucune autre exigence relative à la Politique agricole commune (PAC) ne fait l’objet depuis les années 1990 d’un consensus aussi large entre les parties concernées que celle d’une simplification administrative. Il est urgent de procéder à une simplification, et ce, pour les deux piliers de la PAC et pour tous les niveaux d’acteurs (l’U...

Zu kaum einer anderen Forderung zur Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik (GAP) besteht seit den 1990er Jahren ein derart breiter Konsens zwischen den Beteiligten wie bei der nach einer Verwaltungsvereinfachung der GAP. Eine Vereinfachung ist dringend geboten, und zwar für beide Säulen der GAP und für alle Akteursebenen (EU, Mitgliedstaat, d. h. in Deutschland:...

Objectives: Negative self-perceptions of aging (SPA) have been shown to result in lower levels of preventive behavior, health, and longevity. This study focuses on the understudied SPA effects on healthy eating across the life span. Moreover, it aims to provide longitudinal evidence of the psychological mechanisms behind this relationship. Method:...

There is an increasing trend to use online dating to meet potential partners. Previous studies in off-line contexts indicate that people may judge the risk of sexually transmitted infections based on a person’s appearance. Online dating profiles commonly present profile pictures and verbal self-descriptions. To examine the integration of verbal and...

Field studies indicate that people may form impressions about potential partners’ HIV risk, yet lack insight into what underlies such intuitions. The present study examined which cues may give rise to the perception of riskiness. Towards this end, portrait pictures of persons that are representative of the kinds of images found on social media were...

ICCs for all cues. (DOCX)