What solutions do experts and students think of to get people to eat healthier? A summary of the Oslo workshop

This week I attended a workshop in Oslo in the beautiful building of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The aim of the workshop organized by our Food Ecology group of the Center of Advanced Studies was to come up with novel communication solutions to combat unhealthy eating habits. Guess what the typical ideas are that groups of participants came up with? First of all, apps and blogs are seen as a key solution to inspire consumers to change their behavior. The winning group came with an app for children that reward them for tasting new healthy foods. Other ideas were Facebook cooking pages and nutrition education campaigns targeting hard to reach consumers.

I admit that I am not objective, but I believe that our group came up with a very innovative nudge; a smart cap for sugary soft drink bottles that reduces the sip size. A study of Pascalle Weijzen and colleagues showed that smaller sip sizes lead to less consumption and quicker satisfaction. Our soft drink bottle concept also includes portion size indicators using clever sound and color sensors that indicate a suitable portion size. Enjoy more and drink less! However, one jury member called that 'a fantasy' and another jury member worried about Norwegian consumers traveling to Sweden to purchase cheaper soft drinks. Too bad...

Interestingly, when people are asked to come up with solutions, they first of all seem to think of the educational route to persuasion. This may be obvious, but Walls and colleagues wrote in their paper called 'Why education and choice won't solve the obesity problem' in the American Journal of Public Health: 'Although education and access to information are fundamental rights and are important in a democracy, they have a negligible impact on obesity'.

Anyway, it was fun to see how education is like the first intuitive way to go, even though it is getting more and more clear that focusing solely on increasing people's knowledge will not be sufficient in changing eating habits.

My Top 3 of free apps that support you in sticking to your goals

We all know that it is very hard to stick to your goals. Here you find my Top 3 of free apps that help you stick to your New Year's resolutions.

1) The Eatery: Build on the honest real-time feedback of friends and strangers

My favorite one! Self-monitoring improves self-awareness of behaviour ('Am I really eating that much chocolate?'), but writing down everything you eat can also be quite boring and time-consuming. The Eatery promotes its free app with the slogan 'stop counting calories, start eating better'.

The idea is that you take a picture of everything that you plan to eat. Then you invite your friends to comment on the meals you are about to eat or just finished. Within a few minutes you will then receive a rating on a scale of 1 (very unhealthy) till 100 (extremely healthy). As you can see, my homemade oliebollen (Dutch treat) were not considered to be very healthy. I did not connect to Facebook, but still I received about 20 ratings per snapped food. So, by using crowdsourcing, other people evaluate the healthiness of your eating habits. 

This app is addictive and fun to do! However, I do not always agree with the crowd's healthiness ratings. I noticed that the crowd is also susceptible to biases such as health halos and the negative calorie illusion. Just put a salad next to your burger or state that it is fat-free, and the ratings go up substantially. And although you can indicate the portion size consumed, I have the impression that you do not include that information in your ratings of other people's food. But the idea is great and offers opportunities for interesting consumer studies.

2) Stickk: Make yourself accountable; pay when you do not reach your goals

Stickk is not an app, but a site that claims that your chances of success are higher when you put actual money on your goal. It is not obligatory, but you have the option to commit money to your goal and if you do not achieve it, Stickk will send the money to the person, charity or organisation that you indicated. The site is founded by Yale economists and based on two key principles of behavioural economics: (1) people do not always follow up what they intend to do and (2) incentives motivate people to do things. I did not commit money to my goal, so I guess that is the reason that it was not that motivating. I think I am going to commit myself again, but then with serious money....

3) My Weight App and MyNetDairy: track your weight loss progress
A recent study of Barbara Cunningham showed that people do not lose more weight when they track their diet using smart phones compared to the traditional pen and paper method. But still, if you have a smartphone, it is convenient to try an app.

These apps help you to track you weight day by day (My Weight App) and calories/exercise (MyNetDiary). I used the free versions, and they are easy to use. The progress bar of the My Weight app gives a view on how far you progressed with your weight loss.