Easier to change environments than to change behavior? Rethinking food choice dynamics increase sales of healthy snacks among young people in vocational school canteens.

Description

Improving the dietary patterns of young people in a healthier way is of great societal importance. Traditional approaches are founded on the assumption that educational can be effective in facilitating such change. However, studies have shown that such approaches tends to benefit those already complying with official nutritional advice whereas the socially less advantaged tends to benefit less. As a result, there is an increasing interest in interventions targeting the environment. According to dual process behavioral psychology changes in the environmental design – often referred to as nudgings - holds the potential to influence the consumer to make healthier decisions. The aim of this study was to examine if influencing food choice dynamics by slightly altering the choice architecture by relocating and re-exposing the healthy option could increase the sales of healthy snacks among young people in vocational school canteens. A healthy eating intervention was developed for young people in the canteens of 13 vocational schools. The subjects attending this school type is mainly young men between 16 and 19 years of age. A healthy snack pack that was not previously offered was developed. The intervention targeted access to healthy snacks using two different environmental changes. The salience of the healthy snack packs was increased and customers were re-exposed to the healthy option more places in canteens. Sales data were collected pre and post test by canteen staff according to a protocol that the management of each canteen had agreed to follow. The results showed that significantly more students chose the healthy snacks when measured after the intervention compared to baseline before. However, sales of the unhealthy snacks did not change significantly. We conclude that students at vocational schools are to opt out unhealthy snacks and replace them with healthy alternatives, consideration should be given to increase the exposure of healthy snacks and simultaneously undertake similar actions for the unhealthy snacks. This could for instance by done by removing them or placing them less visibly in the canteen. We conclude that minor changes in the lay out of self serve food facilities seems to be able to change uptake of healthy options. More research is needed to explore effects and potentials of food choice architectures

Period	19 Oct 2017
Event title	21st International Congress of Nutrition (ICN: From Sciences to Nutrition Security
Event type	Conference
Location	Buenos Aires, ArgentinaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International