Healthy Choices Made Easy

Obesity is a complex problem which is the result of a range of social, environmental and behavioural factors.

To date, healthy eating programmes and interventions in Hounslow have largely relied on health education, motivation and supporting individuals to plan to make healthy choices.

One of the underappreciated factors that influence what we eat and how much we eat is the environment. Environmental factors (such as placement, package size, plate shape, lighting, variety, or the presence of others) can increase food consumption volume far more than people may realise (Wansink, 2004).

Research has shown that making healthy options Convenient, Attractive and Normal (CAN) can increase purchasing. (Wansink, 2013).

We are proposing a trial of behavioural insight led approaches to change food environments in Hounslow in order to make healthy choices easier.

We propose to create a checklist of "CAN" approaches as set out by Wansink in various papers along with other relevant behavioural insight led approaches to redesigning food environments.

To then use this checklist to work with a range of local settings to implement and evaluate whether making small changes to the food environment has an impact on purchasing of healthy options.

We require support to design, implement and evaluate these changes in a trial with a number of local settings.