• Am J Prev Med · Feb 2014

    Clinical Trial

    Traffic-light labels and choice architecture: promoting healthy food choices.

    • Anne N Thorndike, Jason Riis, Lillian M Sonnenberg, and Douglas E Levy.
    • General Medicine Division, Boston, Massachusetts. Electronic address: athorndike@partners.org.
    • Am J Prev Med. 2014 Feb 1; 46 (2): 143-9.

    BackgroundPreventing obesity requires maintenance of healthy eating behaviors over time. Food labels and strategies that increase visibility and convenience of healthy foods (choice architecture) promote healthier choices, but long-term effectiveness is unknown.PurposeAssess effectiveness of traffic-light labeling and choice architecture cafeteria intervention over 24 months.DesignLongitudinal pre-post cohort follow-up study between December 2009 and February 2012. Data were analyzed in 2012.Setting/ParticipantsLarge hospital cafeteria with a mean of 6511 transactions daily. Cafeteria sales were analyzed for (1) all cafeteria customers and (2) a longitudinal cohort of 2285 hospital employees who used the cafeteria regularly.InterventionAfter a 3-month baseline period, cafeteria items were labeled green (healthy); yellow (less healthy); or red (unhealthy) and rearranged to make healthy items more accessible.Main Outcome MeasuresProportion of cafeteria sales that were green or red during each 3-month period from baseline to 24 months. Changes in 12- and 24-month sales were compared to baseline for all transactions and transactions by the employee cohort.ResultsThe proportion of sales of red items decreased from 24% at baseline to 20% at 24 months (p<0.001), and green sales increased from 41% to 46% (p<0.001). Red beverages decreased from 26% of beverage sales at baseline to 17% at 24 months (p<0.001); green beverages increased from 52% to 60% (p<0.001). Similar patterns were observed for the cohort of employees, with the largest change for red beverages (23%-14%, p<0.001).ConclusionsA traffic-light and choice architecture cafeteria intervention resulted in sustained healthier choices over 2 years, suggesting that food environment interventions can promote long-term changes in population eating behaviors.© 2013 American Journal of Preventive Medicine Published by American Journal of Preventive Medicine All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…