Fast facts on fast food

What did we do?

We did a (very) rapid literature review on interventions that promote healthy food choices worldwide.

A rapid review is an informative brief, typically completed in 2-6 weeks, that prepares stakeholders for discussion on a policy issue. While systematic reviews remain the golden standard due to their comprehensiveness, rapid reviews are an excellent, robust tool when there is a short time frame.  

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The team included nine high-quality systematic reviews (in English) that focussed on behaviour in healthy populations and discovered:

1: The strategy with the strongest evidence for reducing calorie consumption was the provision of health information, provided it’s paired with interpretive information.

2: Social norms, like modelling ideal healthy choices, could influence food intake, but the literature was of lower quality.

3: Reviews of studies that tried manipulating portion or cutlery size to influence intake were inconclusive or poor quality and interestingly, one review found that this strategy works less well on overweight people.

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What did we find?

The rapid review concluded that meaningful menu labelling, perhaps combined with social modelling, could be a good place to start.

A combination of behaviour change interventions are needed, not a magic bullet.

For its part, the Heart Foundation used the review to work with chefs and venues in normalising healthier choices.

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Comments

The National Heart Foundation said the rapid review, “Reinforced to Government that a combination of interventions are likely to provide the best outcome”.

The review also contracticted  ‘conventional wisdom’ around the effectiveness of crockery and cutlery size and that it has “used this challenge of conventional wisdom in subsequent campaign bids”.

It also said, “The evidence around establishing new social models/norms is one of the interventions we would be keen to try”.

We hope (with all our hearts) these interventions work.

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