By combining physical activity and exposure to nature, green exercise can provide additional health benefits compared to physical activity alone. Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) have emerged as a potentially valuable supplement to environmental and behavioral research, and might also provide new approaches to green exercise promotion. However, it is unknown to what extent green exercise in IVE can provide psychophysiological responses similar to those experienced in real natural environments. In this study, 26 healthy adults underwent three experimental conditions: nature walk, sitting-IVE, and treadmill-IVE. The nature walk took place on a paved trail along a large river. In the IVE conditions, the participants wore a head-mounted display with headphones reproducing a 360° video and audio of the nature walk, either sitting on a chair or walking on a manually driven treadmill. Measurements included environmental perceptions (presence and perceived environmental restorativeness – PER), physical engagement (walking speed, heart rate, and perceived exertion), and affective responses (enjoyment and affect). Additionally, qualitative information was collected through open-ended questions. The participants rated the IVEs with satisfactory levels of ‘being there’ and ‘sense of reality,’ but also reported discomforts such as ‘flatness,’ ‘movement lag’ and ‘cyber sickness.’ With equivalent heart rate and walking speed, participants reported higher perceived exertion in the IVEs than in the nature walk. The nature walk was associated with high enjoyment and enhanced affect. However, despite equivalent ratings of PER in the nature walk and in the IVEs, the latter were perceived as less enjoyable and gave rise to a poorer affect. Presence and PER did not differ between the two IVEs, although in the treadmill-IVE the negative affective responses had slightly smaller magnitude than in the sitting-IVE. In both the IVEs, the negative affective responses were mainly associated with cyber sickness, whereas PER was positively associated with enjoyment. From the qualitative analysis, it emerged that poor postural control and lack of a holistic sensory experience can also hinder immersion in the IVE. The results indicate that IVE technology might in future be a useful instrument in green exercise research and promotion, but only if image quality and cyber sickness can be addressed.

28Background Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption is a goal for the UK. Therefore, the 29

Food environments are directly linked to diets and health outcomes such as overweight, obesity, and noncommunicable diseases. The digitalization of food environments is becoming a central issue in public health, yet little is known about this emerging field. We performed a systematic scoping review to map the research on the digital food environment and investigate how the eight dimensions of the food environment, according to an established framework (availability, prices, vendor and product properties, marketing and regulation, accessibility, affordability, convenience, and desirability), might be shifting in the context of a digital society. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, and Web of Science for studies published between 2000 and 2019, using search terms covering digital technology and food environment, which yielded 13,580 unique records. Our analysis of 357 studies shows that digitalization is taking place in all dimensions of the food environment, and enabling the emergence of new forms of buying and selling food, such as online grocery shopping and online food delivery, which may be changing availability of foods and affecting the physical distance to shops and time allocated for shopping. Systematic reviews identified indicated that digital food marketing and social media can influence food choices, preferences and consumption. Our findings suggest that digital and physical food environments are interconnected and influencing one another, but the impact of the digital on health and nutrition is yet unclear.

BackgroundThe purpose was to analyse the association between physical activity taking place in different contexts (sports club, gym, exercise independently and other organized physical activities) and symptoms of depression.MethodsThe study was based on self-reported cross-sectional data from the Ungdata survey, conducted in 2017 by the Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) institute in cooperation with regional centres for drug rehabilitation. The target group comprised 5531 15–16 years old adolescents (Grade 10 students) and 11,655 students in grades 8 and 9 in Norway. Based on Rasch analysis, six items on depressions symptoms were used to create a composite measure of depression. Binomial logistic regression was used to analyse the association between physical activities in different contexts and symptoms of depression.ResultsIn the crude model, the odds for symptoms of depression were lower for those who were physically active in a sports club (OR: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.30–0.53), in a sports club and gym (OR: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.28–0.56), in a sports club and exercise or keep fit independently (OR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.38–0.72) and in a sports club, gym and exercise or keep fit independently (OR: 0.58, 95% CI: 0.41–0.81). After adjustment for potential confounders, the association became significant only for those who were physically active in a sports club (OR: 0.57, 95% CI: 0.40–0.81) and other organized physical activities, e.g. dance, martial arts (OR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.31–0.86). Analysis for grade 8 and 9 showed the same patterns for the associations between sports club and symptoms of depression (grade 8: crude model, OR: 0.47, adjusted model, OR: 0.63, grade 9: crude model, OR: 0.44, adjusted model, OR: 0.49).ConclusionsPhysical activity in a sports club was associated with significantly lower odds for symptoms of depression, suggesting a possible role for social interaction in addition to physical activity per se. It is important, therefore, to consider in which types of contexts physical activities take place, not only focusing on physical activity frequency and volume when investigating the association between adolescents’ physical activity and mental health. Additional research is needed to further explore these associations as well as measures of physical activity and mental health.

In this article, the authors reflect on the utility of the concept of involvement-detachment for researchers involved in a study of the lifeworlds of gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people where one of the researchers was lesbian. They focus in particular on the process of semistructured interviewing in qualitative research and the analysis of material generated by the interviews, noting that complete detachment from the subject of study is neither achievable nor desirable. They discuss the benefit of teamwork in supporting researchers and enhancing the integrity of the research, particularly when the subject is sensitive, the importance of researchers' active management of their own ideological leanings, and the understanding of project management as a conceptual and cognitive process that is fundamental to enhancing research rigor.