A Smart System to Empower Healthy Food Choices
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Essex
Department Name: Psychology
Abstract
Proper nutrition and healthy diets are a key aspect of health, which mandatory food labelling in the UK tries to address by empowering people with the information to help them make healthier choices. The format of this information (e.g., verbal quantifiers like 'low fat' or numerical quantifiers like '5% fat') affects whether people can easily understand and use food labels. Examining how people's judgements and decisions with respect to food differ depending on food label format therefore has wide-reaching impact for health policy decisions, consumer behaviour, and food industry practice. This project will use computational methods to identify different strategies people use to decide what foods are healthiest (e.g., less fat, or less sugar, etc.) I will evaluate which strategies produce the healthiest choices, use these insights to inform policy and conduct knowledge exchange with my industry partner.
The project will consolidate my PhD, which investigated differences in people's decision-making strategies when using verbal and numerical quantifiers on food labels. Using a mixture of behavioural tasks, surveys, and eye-tracking methodology, I identified that different ways of presenting quantities can lead to people relying on different pieces of information to judge food. I intend to extend this research and maximise its impact in four ways.
First, I will apply new and advanced statistical modelling to my research. To classify and predict food choice strategies in my data, I will learn two modelling techniques: multinomial processing trees, a probability-based method to classify choices, and machine learning, which makes predictions based on patterns in data. For example, I would expect the models to identify cues on food labelling that predict the choices people will make. Using the results of these analyses, I will submit a planned research protocol (a 'Registered Report') to test my model on real-life products. Registered Reports receive peer review prior to data collection, so submitting it during the Fellowship supports my future academic research beyond the Fellowship.
Second, I will extend the impact of my work through knowledge exchange with the start-up company Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd (KFEF). As part of a holistic wellness package, KFEF produces healthy eating advice and recipes with nutritional information for their clients. My research will inform the design of their content for clients. In turn, working with them gives me access to usage metrics from their customer portal that I will analyse to determine if the communication formats are effective. These real-world data will reinforce the lab studies from my PhD and help KFEF improve their product offering.
Third, I will disseminate my research findings to academic and non-academic audiences. For academic audiences, I will produce three new journal articles and present my work at one local and one international academic conference. I will also engage with non-academic audiences through preparing press releases, submitting a policy brief to present at the All-Party Parliamentary Food and Health Forum, and attending a Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum conference. Engaging with policy-makers through these channels will help me lobby for positive change to food labelling guidelines.
Finally, I will prepare a proposal for funding from the Wellcome Trust to create and test a technological system that supports informed food choices. This future proposal will be informed by my PhD data, computational modelling research, and collaborations with: industry (Keep Fit Eat Fit), experts in shaping behavioural policy (at the University of Reading), and experts in technological health interventions (at the University of Konstanz). Ultimately, my research seeks to improve the food choice environment for consumers and empower them to make informed, healthy choices.
The project will consolidate my PhD, which investigated differences in people's decision-making strategies when using verbal and numerical quantifiers on food labels. Using a mixture of behavioural tasks, surveys, and eye-tracking methodology, I identified that different ways of presenting quantities can lead to people relying on different pieces of information to judge food. I intend to extend this research and maximise its impact in four ways.
First, I will apply new and advanced statistical modelling to my research. To classify and predict food choice strategies in my data, I will learn two modelling techniques: multinomial processing trees, a probability-based method to classify choices, and machine learning, which makes predictions based on patterns in data. For example, I would expect the models to identify cues on food labelling that predict the choices people will make. Using the results of these analyses, I will submit a planned research protocol (a 'Registered Report') to test my model on real-life products. Registered Reports receive peer review prior to data collection, so submitting it during the Fellowship supports my future academic research beyond the Fellowship.
Second, I will extend the impact of my work through knowledge exchange with the start-up company Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd (KFEF). As part of a holistic wellness package, KFEF produces healthy eating advice and recipes with nutritional information for their clients. My research will inform the design of their content for clients. In turn, working with them gives me access to usage metrics from their customer portal that I will analyse to determine if the communication formats are effective. These real-world data will reinforce the lab studies from my PhD and help KFEF improve their product offering.
Third, I will disseminate my research findings to academic and non-academic audiences. For academic audiences, I will produce three new journal articles and present my work at one local and one international academic conference. I will also engage with non-academic audiences through preparing press releases, submitting a policy brief to present at the All-Party Parliamentary Food and Health Forum, and attending a Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum conference. Engaging with policy-makers through these channels will help me lobby for positive change to food labelling guidelines.
Finally, I will prepare a proposal for funding from the Wellcome Trust to create and test a technological system that supports informed food choices. This future proposal will be informed by my PhD data, computational modelling research, and collaborations with: industry (Keep Fit Eat Fit), experts in shaping behavioural policy (at the University of Reading), and experts in technological health interventions (at the University of Konstanz). Ultimately, my research seeks to improve the food choice environment for consumers and empower them to make informed, healthy choices.
Publications
Holford D
(2023)
Planning engagement with web resources to improve diet quality and break up sedentary time for home-working employees: A mixed methods study.
in Journal of occupational health psychology
Holford D
(2021)
Characteristics of quantifiers moderate the framing effect
in Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
Holford D L
(2021)
Eye-tracking evidence for fixation asymmetries in verbal and numerical quantifier processing
in Judgment and Decision Making
Holford D.L.
(2021)
Eye-tracking evidence for fixation asymmetries in verbal and numerical quantifier processing
in Judgment and Decision Making
Holford Dawn Liu
(2021)
Eye-tracking evidence for fixation asymmetries in verbal and numerical quantifier processing
in JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING
Holford DL
(2022)
Ambiguity and unintended inferences about risk messages for COVID-19.
in Journal of experimental psychology. Applied
Holford, D.L.
Ambiguity and unintended inferences about risk messages for COVID-19
in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied
Lewandowsky S
(2021)
The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook
Lewandowsky S
(2022)
When Science Becomes Embroiled in Conflict: Recognizing the Public's Need for Debate while Combating Conspiracies and Misinformation.
in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Description | The work funded by this award aimed to understand what strategies people use when making decisions around the healthiness of food, and whether this knowledge can be effective in guiding people towards better food choices. As healthy eating is closely related to physical activity as contributors to managing obesity and healthier lifestyles, joint research with a private sector company also looked at how to facilitate both concurrently using web-based self-help resources. Finally, as the project was undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic just as vaccination drives were beginning in the UK, principles from the research on how people interpret health information were applied where relevant to communicating about COVID-19 and vaccines, in order to support public health guidance and information during this period. A key finding of the work is that people's choices around health and how they understand information about it-whether for food choice, exercise, or vaccination-is very much shaped by their interaction with the environment around them and how they interpret information through a social lens. For example, people have expectations about the types of food they encounter and the contexts in which they are usually consumed, which they factor into their judgements and decisions. This is also evident in decisions about exercise (e.g., people have expectations about what exercise is like, that may need to be overcome to encourage them to move more), risk (e.g., when they read that COVID-19 is more severe for some groups, they infer that the infection is also more likely for those groups) and vaccines, where existing knowledge in the social sphere helps to shape their level of trust in communicators speaking about vaccine side effects. As such, it is necessary to take a systems-based approach to health communication that incorporates people's social understanding of information and the environments in which they typically encounter the information. Guiding people towards the correct interpretation of information could also enhances their ability to choose or make decisions about their actions that will lead to better outcomes for themselves. These key findings were detailed in several publications and ongoing studies that were supported during the period of the award. The following summarises the award's original objectives and how they were met: First, it applied new and advanced statistical modelling to previous research on food decision making. This modelling work, undertaken under the guidance of the project mentor and an industry expert, aimed to classify and predict strategies used in food choice. This objective was met, as the work showed that rather than inherent individual characteristics in people's attitudes towards food, familiarity with food labels, or socio-demographic factors, it was the type of food being judged that interacted with the nutrition information to shape people's decisions about whether or not it would be healthy. This data and the working report has been publicly shared through the UK Data Archive. The findings were also presented at the international Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making conference in August 2021. Second, it contributed to knowledge exchange with a private sector company. A collaborative research study was completed together with the company Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd (KFEF), which used their web-based self-help platform to conduct a randomised controlled experiment that found that planning in the use of informational resources on healthy meals and regular exercise breaks would support desk-based employees in eating more healthily and reducing prolonged sedentary time compared to just providing the information alone. The preliminary findings of this work have contributed to a white paper for the company, and are currently being prepared as an academic manuscript. Third, it intended to inform policy objectives about food labelling. This objective was not met as planned, primarily because policy objectives at the time at shifted towards dealing with COVID-19 and recovery from the pandemic. As the PI's research in the communication of food information and how people understand it had high relevance to communicating about COVID-19, the PI contributed to science communication initiatives to support the pandemic response. Shortly before the award activated, the PI had also completed research into inferences about risks from COVID-19. The biggest contribution made was in co-ordinating and authoring the COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook, which has been distributed widely among NHS staff and other health organisations worldwide. Fourth, as this was an award with a substantial career development component, it sought to further the PI's professional development by enabling the PI to produce additional peer-reviewed publications, build her research network through collaborations with wider research groups, and develop a new funding application for future research. This objective was mainly met. The PI has achieved three new first-authored peer-review publications during the grant period, submitted three more co-authored papers for review (one accepted, one under review, one invited for revision) and is currently working on three additional manuscripts initiated during the project. Further, the PI developed two key collaborative networks during the Fellowship. One is with researchers from the University of Konstanz, as planned in the proposal, where she is currently investigating mobile interventions to track food behaviours. This collaboration will yield a rich dataset of logged food behaviours, including photographs, from participants in Germany and the UK. The second is an initiative for better science communication within the behavioural sciences in crisis situations, which has now produced two workshops that attracted international attendees (including representatives from organisations such as the WHO, the UK Cabinet Office, and major scientific journal publishers). The final outcome, a new funding application, was postponed because early into the Fellowship, the PI already secured a three-year postdoctoral position on a prestigious European Commission-funded project (to begin immediately after the award). |
Exploitation Route | The outcome from the first objective (machine learning analysis of food choice data) is available to other researchers through the UK Data Archive, along with its accompanying analysis code and report. The data and modelling work can be used for further secondary analysis to elucidate the factors that affect food choices. The outcomes from the second objective are actively being used by the company, Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd, who are using the insight to inform their product design and delivery. They have also gained from the experience of designing and executing the joint research, which will support their future product testing. The study findings were also reported on in HR Magazine in December 2021, extending the knowledge exchange outcomes to a wider audience. The findings are of relevance especially to human resource managers, as they are targeted at informing initiatives that large organisations could put in place to help improve the wellbeing of their employees. The outcome from the third objective, the COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook, has benefitted public health organisations, health services, and members of the public. It was designed to help people have effective discussions about vaccination, and the handbook has been shared in multiple settings (e.g., the UK National Health Service) and media outlets. The team also received (and completed) requests to translate it into twelve other languages, highlighting its usefulness internationally. Finally, the publication outcomes from the fourth objective allow researchers and other academics to build on the PI and colleagues' work for further research or draw on it for teaching in psychology and the behavioural sciences. The collaboration with the University of Konstanz under this objective will result in a rich dataset of food behaviours, of which the UK component will be deposited in the UK Data Archive once ready, for further research use. |
Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism |
Description | Findings from the joint collaboration/knowledge exchange with Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd (KFEF) have been used to support the company in improving their product design and delivery processes. The key findings that informed them were data on how participants in the knowledge exchange study used self-help web resources for healthy eating and breaking up sedentary time, including how often these were used, which resources were used, and the finding that participants who had a plan used resources more than participants who did not. KFEF have already used the findings as a white paper for their company, and in two separate company blog posts (on their website, https://keepfiteatfit.com) to inform clients on how they are integrating this work and how clients can benefit from it. As the company specialises in solutions for human resource management, they envision that the findings will be put forward to larger organisations to enable the provision of wellbeing resources to employees at scale. |
First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
Sector | Financial Services, and Management Consultancy |
Impact Types | Economic |
Title | https://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/cgi/users/home?screen=EPrint::Summary&eprintid=855340 |
Description | Dataset and associated material used for the machine learning analysis of food choices. The dataset was obtained from an experiment with 154 participants who made 30 choices of the healthiest food within a choice array of 6 options, given nutritional label data. This is a secondary data analysis and the original data collection was not funded by the grant. The dataset contains 4260 observations (response trials) and 51 variables. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | None to report yet. |
URL | https://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/cgi/users/home?screen=EPrint::Summary&eprintid=855340 |
Description | Healthy eating and movement habits study |
Organisation | Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | In this partnership, I designed a mixed-methods study to investigate the use of action planning in encouraging employees to eat more healthy meals and reduce prolonged sedentary time. In parallel, the study was also designed to provide the partner company with feedback on their product and help with product development. I managed the study, completed all data collection, conducted the analyses, and drafted outcome reports, including a company white paper. |
Collaborator Contribution | My partners at Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd contributed the technological platform and access to their proprietary materials for participants in the study. They also provided services for electronic data collection. |
Impact | A white paper has been produced for the company, which is available on their website. Further outputs from the collaboration are still being prepared. These should include a publication targeted for a peer-reviewed journal and quantitative and qualitative datasets for use in future research. |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | SciBeh |
Organisation | Birkbeck, University of London |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | SciBeh is an initiative/project aimed at "reconfiguring behavioural science for crisis knowledge management". In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this collaboration is creating the infrastructure necessary for rapid crisis knowledge management. I have contributed to many of the project's existing outputs by co-ordinating two workshops (2020 and 2021), organising and maintaining an ongoing "Wiki" project for COVID-19 Vaccine Communication, and ongoing leadership and co-ordination with the (alongside 4 other main collaborators). |
Collaborator Contribution | My partners provided infrastructural support (website), co-ordination, networks, and joint leadership of the initiative and all the project outputs. |
Impact | 1. The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook & Wiki (https://c19vax.scibeh.org) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, virology, biomedical sciences, medicine, public health, policy, social science, economics 2. SciBeh COVID-19 Knowledge Base (https://www.scibeh.org/#kb) 3. SciBeh Discussion Fora (https://www.scibeh.org/#forum) 4. Paper on the impact of pre-prints during the COVID-19 pandemic (currently in pre-print format) 5. Virtual Workshop on "Building an online information environment for policy relevant science" (https://www.scibeh.org/events/workshop2020/) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, public health, policy, social science, economics 6. Virtual Workshop on "Science Communication as Collective Intelligence" (https://www.scibeh.org/events/workshop2021/) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, public health, computer science, linguistics, economics, social science, policy |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | SciBeh |
Organisation | Max Planck Society |
Department | Max Planck Institute for Human Development |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | SciBeh is an initiative/project aimed at "reconfiguring behavioural science for crisis knowledge management". In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this collaboration is creating the infrastructure necessary for rapid crisis knowledge management. I have contributed to many of the project's existing outputs by co-ordinating two workshops (2020 and 2021), organising and maintaining an ongoing "Wiki" project for COVID-19 Vaccine Communication, and ongoing leadership and co-ordination with the (alongside 4 other main collaborators). |
Collaborator Contribution | My partners provided infrastructural support (website), co-ordination, networks, and joint leadership of the initiative and all the project outputs. |
Impact | 1. The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook & Wiki (https://c19vax.scibeh.org) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, virology, biomedical sciences, medicine, public health, policy, social science, economics 2. SciBeh COVID-19 Knowledge Base (https://www.scibeh.org/#kb) 3. SciBeh Discussion Fora (https://www.scibeh.org/#forum) 4. Paper on the impact of pre-prints during the COVID-19 pandemic (currently in pre-print format) 5. Virtual Workshop on "Building an online information environment for policy relevant science" (https://www.scibeh.org/events/workshop2020/) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, public health, policy, social science, economics 6. Virtual Workshop on "Science Communication as Collective Intelligence" (https://www.scibeh.org/events/workshop2021/) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, public health, computer science, linguistics, economics, social science, policy |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | SciBeh |
Organisation | University of Bristol |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | SciBeh is an initiative/project aimed at "reconfiguring behavioural science for crisis knowledge management". In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this collaboration is creating the infrastructure necessary for rapid crisis knowledge management. I have contributed to many of the project's existing outputs by co-ordinating two workshops (2020 and 2021), organising and maintaining an ongoing "Wiki" project for COVID-19 Vaccine Communication, and ongoing leadership and co-ordination with the (alongside 4 other main collaborators). |
Collaborator Contribution | My partners provided infrastructural support (website), co-ordination, networks, and joint leadership of the initiative and all the project outputs. |
Impact | 1. The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook & Wiki (https://c19vax.scibeh.org) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, virology, biomedical sciences, medicine, public health, policy, social science, economics 2. SciBeh COVID-19 Knowledge Base (https://www.scibeh.org/#kb) 3. SciBeh Discussion Fora (https://www.scibeh.org/#forum) 4. Paper on the impact of pre-prints during the COVID-19 pandemic (currently in pre-print format) 5. Virtual Workshop on "Building an online information environment for policy relevant science" (https://www.scibeh.org/events/workshop2020/) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, public health, policy, social science, economics 6. Virtual Workshop on "Science Communication as Collective Intelligence" (https://www.scibeh.org/events/workshop2021/) *Multidisciplinary, involving behavioural science/psychology, public health, computer science, linguistics, economics, social science, policy |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Sustainability Study (Ecological Momentary Assessment of Food Waste Behaviours) |
Organisation | University of Konstanz |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | The project aims to track people's behaviour around food waste in the household and identify factors and situations that contribute to food waste in this context. I co-designed the collaborative research study and collected data for the research within the UK. |
Collaborator Contribution | My partners co-designed the collaborative research study and collected data for the research in Germany. |
Impact | The outputs from this project are still upcoming, but are projected to be at least one academic paper published in a peer-reviewed international journal and a rich dataset that will be made available for further research. |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | HR Magazine article |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | HR Magazine reported on the outcomes of a knowledge exchange partnership from this award. The article was written in the context of work from home guidance in late 2021, to help organisations and companies support employees' wellbeing when working from home. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/other/managers-should-encourage-exercise-breaks-at-work-researc... |
Description | Interview for regional news |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
Results and Impact | The PI was interviewed on BBC East about why people may behave in certain ways when told certain information (in the context of fuel shortages at the time). She spoke about how the use of words influences expectations and emotions and therefore behaviour. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://article.signal-ai.com/25d89af4-ca5f-358e-a766-1b05950bd76c?v=app&u=e2d842bf-361c-4b5c-a822-8... |
Description | QUEST podcast |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
Results and Impact | The PI gave an interview for the QUEST podcast, speaking about information provision in the context of vaccines and how to communicate effectively, drawing from research in communications and how people interpret information. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://questproject.eu/the-quest-podcast-episode-4-vaccines/ |