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The influence of diet on health is widely recognised and documented. Diet is a product of choices made by consumers and as such is influenced by a variety of factors. By understanding these influences it will be possible to design policies that are cost effective in delivering improvements in diets that are of public interest. This contributes to the gap in knowledge about the pattern of food purchasing behaviour among households in the United Kingdom and its links with the increasing prevalence of diet-related diseases (e.g. obesity).

As the incidence of obesity reaches 'epidemic' proportions, there is currently widespread interest in the impact of dietary components on body weight and food intake. Available evidence from epidemiological and intervention studies suggest a negative but modest relationship between milk product consumption and measures of adiposity. The purported physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying the impact of dairy constituents on adiposity are incompletely understood but may include effects on lipolysis, lipogenesis and fat absorption. The relationships between type of dairy products and adiposity were analysed using data derived from the Caerphilly Cohort. Results indicated that most of the positive effect is due to milk, with the body mass index of high milk consumers (>568ml/d) being less than non-milk consumers. There 'is a paucity of evidence regarding the effect of increased milk consumption or the effect of different types of milk products on appetite and overall energy intake. A cross-over study in forty overweight men was conducted, which examined the effect of consumption of individual milk products as snacks on appetite (Visual analogue scale scores) and subsequent ad libitum meal energy intake. Results showed that among the milk products, yoghurt had the greatest impact on suppression of appetite. Hunger ratings were 8%, 10% and 24% (P<0.001) lower after intake of yoghurt compared with intake of cheese, milk and water respectively, although there were no differences in energy intake. The diversity of responses to nutritional interventions could be partly explained by genetic variation. Therefore, relationships between appetite ratings derived from the cross-over study and particular genetic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in men were examined. Results suggested a role of specific SNPs in the rs9939609 (FTO) and leptin genes on satiety. Further human trials are required to investigate whether milk and its constituents have an effect on appetite regulation, and as a consequence on subsequent energy intake, and to establish responsiveness in population subgroups.

Flavonoids are naturally occurring bioactive chemicals which are plentiful in a diet high in fruit and vegetables. Animal research has shown reliable effects of a flavonoid-supplemented diet on biochemical, physiological and psychological indices of brain function, particularly in areas of learning and memory (Joseph et al., 2003; Joseph et al., 1999; C. M. Williams et al., 2008). However, there is a lacuna of human intervention studies which supplement the diet with a flavonoid-high source and measure cognitive function. This area of research is important in view of the increasing incidence of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), in the ageing population, as diet is influential in maintaining healthy cognitive function and has the potential to ameliorate cognitive decline (Alzheimer's Society, 2010). Two human intervention studies were conducted using blueberries as the flavonoid- high source. The acute study administered a one-off dose of flavonoids, contained in a flavonoid-high 'Smoothie' style drink, or a matched flavonoid-Iow control drink, and measured mood, memory, executive function and attention, and motor skills before, and 1 and 5 hours after the drinks. Young and older adults were tested with this method. A chronic study employed an 8 week intervention where the older participants consumed either 80 grams of a flavonoid-high fruit or a flavonoid-Iow control fruit on a daily basis. Measures of mood, memory, executive function and attention were taken at baseline, and after 4 and 8 weeks of the intervention. Preliminary findings from the acute study showed a reliable effect of the flavonoid- high drink on a test of executive function and attention five hours after the drink was consumed by the young adults, compared with the control drink. A similar non- significant trend was observed in the older adults. No reliable effects were observed in the chronic intervention. Overall, little evidence of nutritional treatment effects on cognition were shown.

This thesis contributes to the recent empirical literature concerning demand for calories and dietary diversity, using household survey data from Iraq. To the best of our knowledge, there is no study which investigates the demand for calories and dietary diversity in this country in a comprehensive way. This work provides detailed descriptive statistics about household consumption behaviour and the related issues, using both time-series and cross-sectional data from Iraq. Additionally, it computes quality-adjusted prices that do not contain demandrelated effects. Evidence indicates that the performance of the Iraqi economy during the past four decades has been dismal, and the country has recently become one of the biggest importers of food products in the region. The study finds that the households allocate on average more than half of their food expenditures to vegetables and meat, and that the average per capita calories is about 3.7% below the national minimum recommended. The computed Gini coefficients of expenditure and of calorie consumption are 0.33 and 0.35, respectively. The study finds that urban households consume more per capita calories than rural households. The households in the Kurdistan region consume a considerably higher amount of per capita calories than the national minimum recommended level of calories. Each person/adult needs approximately US$1.89 daily in order to obtain the national minimum recommended level of calories. The 'direct method' of calorie-demand computation was adopted in order to analyse the relationship between calories and a number of important determinants. Three different methods were used to compute dietary diversity. The results show that income has a significantly positive and nonlinear effect on both calories and dietary diversity. Calorie-income elasticity in Iraq is far from the value of zero, and all calorie-price elasticities are negative and inelastic. The thesis finds that a wide range of socioeconomic factors have a significant impact on demand for calories and dietary diversity, such as women's education, household size and composition, characteristics of the household head , and regional and seasonal factors.