Program Overview

Program Overview

The MSc Programme in Food Innovation and Health offers a course titled "Determinants of Food Consumption" (NFOK18000U). This course focuses on the various factors underlying consumers' food behaviors, including theories on determinants of food consumption, strategies to change behavior, and the social significance and meaning of food.

Course Description

The course explores social, cultural, cognitive, developmental, psychophysiological, and neuroeconomic approaches, as well as theories of human action and decision-making processes. It discusses factors influencing food acceptance throughout life, relationships between choice, consumption of foods, and sensory, psychological, and physiological responses in the human body.

Key Topics

• Food culture
• Eating habits
• Food neophobia
• Meal structures and patterns
• The importance of food and meals in everyday life
• Social and cultural influences on food preferences
• Food acceptability and habits
• The role of health in ordinary eating habits
• Food security
• Strategies for influencing acceptance of sustainable foods, including repeated exposure, conditioning, nudging, and choice architecture
• Public health nutrition and nutritional health disparities

Learning Outcome

The course aims to introduce students to key determinants of food consumption from different perspectives.

Knowledge

• List the most important determinants that play a role in food consumption
• Express knowledge about the meanings associated with food and meals
• Describe social and cultural variations in people's relationship to food
• Describe cutting-edge data collection methods, including biometric and machine learning technologies
• Describe different scientific review types

Skills

• Explain the coupling between sensory and physiological effects on food intake
• Analyze and discuss the formation of food preferences and habits and how these are related to social life, cultural meaning, sensation, perception, cognition, emotion, and physiological process
• Understand the central social and cultural aspects of people’s relationship to food
• Explain basic principles in public health nutrition and food access
• Understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative methods in the scope of the course materials
• Design and reflect on solutions to handle scientific as well as everyday life problems in breaking and/or establishing new food habits
• Compare and explain how different scientific disciplines work with food consumption

Competences

• Evaluate and critically review scientific work related to changes in food consumption and transitions towards more sustainable behaviors
• Collaborate in cross-disciplinary groups
• Assess food and nutritional related issues from a social and cultural perspective
• Critically assess study designs and scientific literature
• Write scientifically in the form of a literature review

Literature

The course literature is available on Absalon.

Recommended Academic Qualifications

Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree are recommended.

Teaching and Learning Methods

The course includes lectures, exercises, and project work, with discussions of projects. Theoretical concepts are introduced in lectures, and students work with problems within these concepts in theoretical exercises.

Workload

• Lectures: 62 hours
• Preparation: 78 hours
• Theory exercises: 10 hours
• Project work: 55 hours
• Exam: 1 hour
• Total: 206 hours

Exam

The exam is an oral exam based on a previous submission, lasting 20 minutes. The exam grade is comprised of:

1. Individual assessment of the group report during the first part of the oral exam (30% of the grade)
2. Individual assessment of the student's knowledge, skills, and competences regarding the course curriculum during the second part of the oral exam (70% of the grade)

Examination Prerequisites

Presentation of the draft version of the group project report in the last week(s) of the course is mandatory for attending the oral examination.

Aid

No aids are allowed during the exam.

Marking Scale

The course uses a 7-point grading scale.

Censorship Form

There is no external censorship, but several internal examiners.

Re-exam

The re-exam follows the same format as the ordinary exam. A failed project report must be edited and re-submitted at least one week before the date of the re-examination.

Criteria for Exam Assessment

See the Learning Outcome section for details.

Course Information

• Language: English
• Course code: NFOK18000U
• Credit: 7.5 ECTS
• Level: Full Degree Master
• Duration: 1 block
• Placement: Block 1
• Schedule: C

Study Board

The Study Board of Food, Human Nutrition, and Sports is responsible for this course.

Contracting Departments

• Department of Food Science
• Department of Food and Resource Economics

Contracting Faculty

• Faculty of Science

Course Coordinators

• Bodil Helene Allesen-Holm (Course coordinator)
• Wesley Dean
• Helene Christine Reinbach

Timetable

The course is scheduled as 25E-B1-1; Hold 01;; Determinants of Food Consumption.