Trust and Safe Choices: Coping with health-related risks in food consumption in St. Petersburg

This dissertation considers the problem of trust in the context of food consumption. The research perspectives refer to institutional conditions for consumer trust, personal practices of food consumption, and strategies consumers employ for controlling the safety of their food. The main concern of the study is to investigate consumer trust as an adequate response to food risks, i.e. a strategy helping the consumer to make safe choices in an uncertain food situation. "Risky" perspective serves as a frame of reference for understanding and explaining trust relations. The original aim of the study was to reveal the meanings applied to the concepts of trust, safety and risks in the perspective of market choices, the assessments of food risks and the ways of handling them. Supplementary research tasks presumed descriptions of institutional conditions for consumer trust, including descriptions of the food market, and the presentation of food consumption patterns in St. Petersburg. The main empirical material is based on qualitative interviews with consumers and interviews and group discussions with professional experts (market actors, representatives of inspection bodies and consumer organizations). Secondary material is used for describing institutional conditions for consumer trust and the market situation. The results suggest that the idea of consumer trust is associated with the reputation of suppliers, stable quality and taste of their products, and reliable food information. Being a subjectively constructed state connected to the act of acceptance, consumer trust results in positive buying decisions and stable preferences in the food market. The consumers' strategies that aim at safe food choices refer to repetitive interactions with reliable market actors that free them from constant consideration in the marketplace. Trust in food is highly mediated by trust in institutions involved in the food system. The analysis reveals a clear pattern of disbelief in the efficiency of institutional food control. The study analyses this as a reflection of "total distrust" that appears to be a dominant mood in many contexts of modern Russia. However, the interviewees emphasize the state's decisive role in suppressing risks in the food market. Also, the findings are discussed with reference to the consumers' possibilities of personal control over food risks. Three main responses to a risky food situation are identified: the reflexive approach, the traditional approach, and the fatalistic approach.

Leisure-time physical activity, health related functioning and retirement : a prospective cohort study among middle-aged employees

Physical inactivity has become a major threat to public health worldwide. The Finnish health and welfare policies emphasize that the working population should maintain good health and functioning until their normal retirement age and remain in good health and independence later in life. Health behaviours like physical activity potentially play an important role in reaching this target as physical activity contributes to better physical fitness and to reduced risk of major chronic diseases. The aim of this study was to examine first whether the volume and intensity of leisure-time physical activity impacts on subsequent physical health functioning, sickness absence and disability retirement. The second aim was to examine changes in leisure-time physical activity of moderate and vigorous intensity after transition to retirement. This study is part of the ongoing Helsinki Health Study. The baseline data were collected by questionnaires in 2000 - 02 among the employees of the City of Helsinki aged 40 to 60. The follow-up survey data were collected in 2007. Data on sickness absence were obtained from the employer s (City of Helsinki) sickness absence registers and pension data were obtained from the Finnish Centre for Pensions. Leisure-time physical activity was measured in four grades of intensity and classified according to physical activity recommendations considering both the volume and intensity of physical activity. Statistical techniques including analysis of covariance, logistic regression, Cox proportional hazards models and Poisson regression were used. Employees who were vigorously active during leisure time especially had better physical health functioning than those physically inactive. High physical activity in particular contributed to the maintenance of good physical health functioning. High physical activity also reduced the risk of subsequent sickness absences as well as the risk of all-cause disability retirement and retirement due to musculoskeletal and mental causes. Among those transferred to old-age retirement moderate-intensity leisure-time physical activity increased on average by more than half an hour per week and in addition the occurrence of physical inactivity reduced. Such changes were not observed among those remained employed and those transferred to disability retirement. This prospective cohort study provided novel results on the effects of leisure-time physical activity on health related functioning and changes in leisure-time physical activity after retirement. Although the benefits of moderate-intensity physical activity for health are well known these results suggest the importance of vigorous physical activity for subsequent health related functioning. Thus vigorous physical activity to enhance fitness should be given more emphasis from a public health perspective. In addition, physical activity should be encouraged among those who are about to retire.

The changing role of legislation related to forest conservation and forest resources development.

XVIII IUFRO World Congress, Ljubljana 1986.