The impact of interventions to promote healthier ready-to-eat meals (to eat in, to take away or to be delivered) sold by specific food outlets open to the general public: a systematic review.

Auteur(s) :
Hillier-Brown FC., Summerbell CD., Lake AA., Moore HJ., Routen A., Adams J., Whitehouse MR., Araujo-Soares V., Abraham C., Adamson AJ., Brown TJ.
Date :
Nov, 2016
Source(s) :
Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity. #18:2 p227-46
Adresse :
Obesity Related Behaviours Research Group, School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health, Durham University, Stockton-on-Tees, UK. [email protected]

Sommaire de l'article

INTRODUCTION
Ready-to-eat meals sold by food outlets that are accessible to the general public are an important target for public health intervention. We conducted a systematic review to assess the impact of such interventions.

METHODS
Studies of any design and duration that included any consumer-level or food-outlet-level before-and-after data were included.

RESULTS
Thirty studies describing 34 interventions were categorized by type and coded against the Nuffield intervention ladder: restrict choice = trans fat law (n = 1), changing pre-packed children's meal content (n = 1) and food outlet award schemes (n = 2); guide choice = price increases for unhealthier choices (n = 1), incentive (contingent reward) (n = 1) and price decreases for healthier choices (n = 2); enable choice = signposting (highlighting healthier/unhealthier options) (n = 10) and telemarketing (offering support for the provision of healthier options to businesses via telephone) (n = 2); and provide information = calorie labelling law (n = 12), voluntary nutrient labelling (n = 1) and personalized receipts (n = 1). Most interventions were aimed at adults in US fast food chains and assessed customer-level outcomes. More 'intrusive' interventions that restricted or guided choice generally showed a positive impact on food-outlet-level and customer-level outcomes. However, interventions that simply provided information or enabled choice had a negligible impact.

CONCLUSION
Interventions to promote healthier ready-to-eat meals sold by food outlets should restrict choice or guide choice through incentives/disincentives. Public health policies and practice that simply involve providing information are unlikely to be effective.

Source : Pubmed
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