Vegetable interventions at unconventional occasions: the effect of freely available snack vegetables at workplace meetings on consumption

Abstract

PurposeSnacks at work are often of poor dietary quality. The main objective of the current study is to examine the effect of making vegetable snacks available at workplace meetings on consumption.Design/methodology/approachIn three between-subjects field experiments conducted at a hospital and three ministries in the Netherlands, with meeting as the unit of condition assignment, attendees were exposed to an assortment of vegetables, varying in vegetable variety and presence of promotional leaflet in study 1 (N = 136 meetings), serving container in study 2 (N = 88 meetings) and additional presence of cookies in study 3 (N = 88 meetings). Consumption of vegetables and cookies was measured at meeting level to assess grams consumed per person.FindingsAcross the three studies, average consumption per meeting attendee was 74 g (SD = 43) for study 1; 78 g (SD = 43) for study 2 and 87 g (SD = 35) for study 3. In the first study, manipulation of perceived variety and information leaflets did not affect intake. In the second study, significantly more vegetables were eaten when they were offered in single sized portions (M = 97 g, SD = 45) versus in a shared multiple portions bowl (63 g, SD = 38) (p < 0.001). In the third study, no effect was found of the additional availability of cookies on vegetable consumption during the meeting.Practical implicationsThe present studies show how availability of vegetables at unconventional occasions makes meeting attendants consume considerable portions of vegetables on average. As such, offering healthy snacks at the workplace may be a valuable part of workplace health promotion programs and positively change the “office cake culture”.Originality/valueVegetable intake is less than recommended in many countries worldwide. Many snacking occasions are at work, which makes office meetings a potential consumption occasion to encourage vegetable intake. Hence, the aim of this study is to examine whether free availability of vegetable snacks during meetings contributes to their consumption among meeting attendees and under what conditions consumption is optimal.

Effectiveness of workplace choice architecture modification for healthy eating and daily physical activity

“…At sites with greater dose and quality of implementation, the intervention also targeted several eating-related contexts at the worksite (coffee rooms, meetings, and/or cafeterias). Consistent with our findings, other worksite choice architecture interventions have observed favourable effects on food consumption after implementing various types of strategies that function through various mechanisms (availability, visibility, proximity, promotion, and price incentives) [24] and after reducing effort with enhanced relative availability [23] and/or convenience [19] of targeted foods. Meta-analyses also suggest that behaviourally oriented strategies in general yield on average greater effects compared to cognitively or affectively oriented strategies [8,9].…”

“…Published interventions have nevertheless been limited along several dimensions of scale-up, such as intervention settings, targets, strategies, and duration. Worksite choice architecture interventions for healthy lifestyles have mainly nudged food choices at worksite cafeterias [15,16] or prompted stair use over the elevator [17] but rarely targeted eating or daily physical activity in other contexts at the workplace [18][19][20]. Equally rare are realworld interventions that have lasted longer than few months [21] or involved multiple implementation sites with broader target populations [22][23][24][25].…”