Factors influencing the willingness to pay a price premium for red meat with potential to improve consumer wellness in Australia and the United States of America.

This study determined consumers' attitudes towards physical and mental wellness related to red meat consumption and their willingness to pay (WTP) more for the meat. In 2019, two online surveys of red meat eaters were conducted in the USA (n = 1000) and Australia (n = 523) using commercial platforms. Results showed that over 90% of respondents indicated interest in purchasing red meat to improve their wellness status. Additionally, about 85% indicated their WTP more for red meat for its wellness benefits, with Americans indicating stronger willingness than Australian respondents. The potential of meat consumption to improve overall wellness among red meat eaters was a dominant factor influencing consumers' WTP more. Other factors that increased WTP included frequency of meat consumption, physical exercise, sleep quality, number of children in a household, partnership status, and economic position. Outcomes from this study highlight a unique opportunity for the meat industry to position meat on its qualities that include wellness improvement if backed up with robust scientific evidence.

The value of Bayesian predictive projection for variable selection: an example of selecting lifestyle predictors of young adult well-being.

BACKGROUND: Variable selection is an important issue in many fields such as public health and psychology. Researchers often gather data on many variables of interest and then are faced with two challenging goals: building an accurate model with few predictors, and making probabilistic statements (inference) about this model. Unfortunately, it is currently difficult to attain these goals with the two most popular methods for variable selection methods: stepwise selection and LASSO. The aim of the present study was to demonstrate the use predictive projection feature selection - a novel Bayesian variable selection method that delivers both predictive power and inference. We apply predictive projection to a sample of New Zealand young adults, use it to build a compact model for predicting well-being, and compare it to other variable selection methods. METHODS: The sample consisted of 791 young adults (ages 18 to 25, 71.7% female) living in Dunedin, New Zealand who had taken part in the Daily Life Study in 2013-2014. Participants completed a 13-day online daily diary assessment of their well-being and a range of lifestyle variables (e.g., sleep, physical activity, diet variables). The participants' diary data was averaged across days and analyzed cross-sectionally to identify predictors of average flourishing. Predictive projection was used to select as few predictors as necessary to approximate the predictive accuracy of a reference model with all 28 predictors. Predictive projection was also compared to other variable selection methods, including stepwise selection and LASSO. RESULTS: Three predictors were sufficient to approximate the predictions of the reference model: higher sleep quality, less trouble concentrating, and more servings of fruit. The performance of the projected submodel generalized well. Compared to other variable selection methods, predictive projection produced models with either matching or slightly worse performance; however, this performance was achieved with much fewer predictors. CONCLUSION: Predictive projection was used to efficiently arrive at a compact model with good predictive accuracy. The predictors selected into the submodel - felt refreshed after waking up, had less trouble concentrating, and ate more servings of fruit - were all theoretically meaningful. Our findings showcase the utility of predictive projection in a practical variable selection problem.

A common polymorphism in serotonin receptor 1B mRNA moderates regulation by miR-96 and associates with aggressive human behaviors.

Non-coding regulatory elements can transduce the human genome's response to environmental stimuli. Thus, there is a possibility that variation in non-coding regulatory elements may underlie some of the diversity in human behavior. However, this idea has remained largely untested due to the difficulty in accurately identifying regulatory elements in the 98% of the human genome that does not encode protein. The recent recognition that small trans-acting RNAs anneal to mRNA and regulate gene expression provides a means to identify and test such variants. Here, we show that microRNA-directed silencing of mRNA can be attenuated by a common human polymorphism. We have identified an element (A-element) within serotonin receptor 1B (HTR1B) mRNA that confers repression by miR-96. The repressive activity of this element is attenuated by a common human variant (G-element) that disrupts a nucleotide critical for its interaction with miR-96. Because deletion of the HTR1B gene leads to an aggressive phenotype in mice, we hypothesized an association between the A/G polymorphism and aggressive phenotypes in a sample of 359 college students. As predicted, individuals homozygous for the ancestral A-element reported more conduct-disorder behaviors than individuals with the G-element. Our studies suggest that such functional variants may be common and may help to refine the search for genes involved in complex behavioral disorders.