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Food literacy is an emerging concept associated with the skills, capabilities and knowledge to prepare a healthy diet and make healthy food choices. This study aims to examine how a dietary gatekeeper’s intentions to prepare a healthy diet for their family, and the subsequent satisfaction that a healthy diet is achieved, is influenced by their food literacy and by barriers to healthy eating.

A two-stage cross-sectional study was undertaken with 756 dietary gatekeepers who completed a baseline (time 1) and a three-month follow-up (time 2) questionnaire. Partial least square-structural equation modeling was used to estimate relationships between gatekeeper food literacy, their demographic characteristics, socio-cognitive factors, time 1 satisfaction with the healthiness of the household diet and intention to provide a healthy family diet. The follow-up survey assessed subsequent satisfaction with the healthiness of the household diet and barriers to achieving it.

The results highlight the significance of the dietary gatekeeper’s food literacy in overcoming barriers to healthy eating and fostering increased satisfaction with the healthiness of the family diet. The research further highlights the influence of past satisfaction, attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Several demographics factors are also highlighted as influential.

The research offers new insights into the role of food literacy in the home environment including its influence on the dietary gatekeeper’s satisfaction with the family diet. The current model also provides strong evidence that food literacy can reduce the impact of barriers to healthy eating experienced by gatekeepers. The research has limitations associated with the socio-economic status of respondents and thus offers scope for research into different populations and their food literacy, younger and early formed cohabiting and the negotiation of food and dietary responsibility and on intergenerational food literacy.

The current findings regarding the impact of food literacy have significant implications for government agencies, non-profit agencies, educational institutions and other related stakeholders in their effort to curb obesity. Implications exist for micro-level programmes and actions designed to influence gatekeepers, family members and households and at the macro level for policies and programmes designed to influence the obesogenicity of the food environments.

The current study is one of the first to offer evidence on the role of food literacy in the home environment and its ability to overcome barriers to healthy eating. The research provides social marketers and public policymakers with novel insights regarding the need for increased food literacy and for developing interventions to improve food literacy in dietary gatekeepers.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the self‐reported health‐promoting behaviours of music and non‐music performance students in higher education. It also seeks to determine the extent to which perceived health and self‐reported symptoms are associated with lifestyle, emotional affect state, self‐regulation and self‐efficacy.

Music performance students from two conservatoires (n=198) and students of nursing and biomedical science (health students) from two universities (n=65) aged 18‐26 years completed the health‐promoting lifestyle inventory; the positive and negative affect, the self‐efficacy and the self‐regulation scales, as well as reporting their present health and completing an inventory of musculo‐ and non‐musculoskeletal health problems.

Music performance students score lower than health students on health responsibility, physical activity and spiritual growth; also on self‐efficacy and self‐regulation. Music performance students rate their health, generally, worse than do health students, and report a wider variety of symptoms, which they rate as more severe than do health students. Perceived present health is most strongly correlated with reported healthy lifestyle. This in turn is associated with positive affect, self‐efficacy and self‐regulation.

This is a relatively small‐scale investigation of the health‐promoting behaviours and experiences of ill‐health reported by two groups of students following different programmes of study and with different career aspirations. Firm conclusions cannot therefore be drawn.

While nursing and biomedical science students may be atypical in that they are likely to gain a greater awareness of health issues from their studies, it could be argued that music performance students need to adopt healthy lifestyles in order to reach their full potential as musicians, and health promotion should be part of their training.

The interrelationships among lifestyle, physical health and psychological well‐being have been studied in a number of populations. The health‐promoting behaviours of music performance students in comparison with those of other students are of particular interest given the physical and emotional demands of expert music making.