Obesity and Lifestyle choices

In the run up to the Useful Simple Trust’s consultation on obesity and lifestyle, this forum is for thoughts prompted by David and Melissa’s briefing documents and source articles.

Hi everybody,
I thought I might try to kick off some discussion by some musings on a useful yet simple act…eating fruit.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away…According to the World Health Organisation, low intake of fruit and veg is among the top 10 risk factors for disease. Eating fruits and vegetables every day could help prevent Heart Disease/Stroke, Certain Cancers, Type II Diabetes and Obesity. Low intake of fruits and vegetables worldwide is estimated to cause 31% of ischaemic heart disease (heart attack), 19% gastrointestinal cancer, and 11% of stroke.

In the UK, 33% of all deaths result from circulatory diseases, and 28% of all deaths result from cancer. Obesity is fast becoming a major issue. These diseases have their roots in childhood – yet 80% of children in the UK do not consume the minimum recommended levels of fruit & veg, thereby increasing risk for these and a host of other chronic diseases. (my god, how many stats can I fit in one post?)

Food for thought? Forget swine flu, forget HIV…If an organisation could somehow increase the rate of fruit/veg consumption on a population level, the beneficial consequences would be enormous.

OK, easier said than done, but still…

David

Perhaps easier said than done, but what efforts have been made to make fruit and veg more readily available than the more unhealthy alternatives, or more to the point, more attractive? Or even more valuable? Involving children in the growing of fruit and vegetables would be too small scale, but what about involving them in the sale of fruit and veg, as an alternative to paper rounds, say.

And on an alternative thread, is there any way in which fruit could be presented in a more attractive and appealing way in schools?

Hi all, I found a good You Tube video that summarizes most of the important points related to obesity.  It has 3 short segments.  Check them out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkEeP2sDjHg

Nudge, the book, is about choice architecture and what determines a lot of our choices.  Very interesting.
Here is the website where there is a very funny blog.
http://www.nudges.org/
There I found this really cool video about a creative way to get people to take the stairs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=player_embedded

Here is another one about a funny rubbish bin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEKAwCoCKw&NR=1

Your first video is good at getting the message across - it’s much more complicated than calories and calories out.

The ‘Killer at Large’ film that it references spells it out in capital letters: the ‘terror within’. Slogans such as ‘the life expectancy of our children is less than our own’ are also quite compelling.

Oli,

Funny you should mention involving kids in the selling of fruit…one initiative we have trialled here in Ireland is a school fruit micro business. Transition Year kids get involved promoting and selling fruit to their peers. In the test school, the number of kids consuming fruit once or more per day rose from 18 to 38% over the first year of operation…the kids involved also learn valuable entrepreneurial skills. The peer pressure effect works well in this kind of initiative, as the bigger, cooler kids are the ones pushing the fruit. The first scheme is still in operation after four years, and the kids have completely changed the model, year by year. It looks completely different to the scheme we started, and works better than we could have imagined.

Most of the governement sponsored initiatives that I have seen are very top-down, and involve some kind of authority figure or organisation telling young people what to do. This may work to a degree with younger children. Interestingly, Tesco linked fruit with cartoon character sponsorship, a tactic usually used by junk food manufacturers to sell their products to younger kids/parents (e.g. high sugar breakfast cereals are often marketed by means of character tie-ins).

When you talk to fruit companies, you find that the reason they don’t do more of this kind of promotion is that they see themselves as selling commodities rather than differentiated and branded products…an apple is an apple, and if you buy an apple you don’t necessarily look for an apple grown by company X.  If company X spends money promoting their apples, they are basically helping promote ALL apples. This is very different to say coca cola…money spent promoting coke affects their bottom line directly. This is beginning to change slightly, with the brand attached to the variety of fruit (e.g. Pink Lady apples). The growers representative bodies do some joint promotions, but the amount that fruit companies put in to these kind of initiatives is small.

D

David, it is interesting what you say about the school fruit business being developed by the kids into a more successful than the one that you started with. One of the aims of the Think Up Kenyan Playgrounds project was to help local people design the playgrounds in a refugee camp rather than having them designed by an external consultant.

Perhaps there is mileage in asking kids to help design the solution. That solution could be in setting up a business, or in some other scheme. What we could look to is setting up the conditions in which those affected can help design their own way out of the problem. My girlfriend had some involvement last year in the Envision project. I will look up the details but the basic premise was a weekly workshop with 14-17 year olds that empowered them to make a difference in their community. Perhaps there is scope to bringing design into this process. I will see what I can find out about this programme.
Oli

I’d be very interested in the project you mention Oli.
My feeling is that bringing kids into the design process would make all the difference…letting kids have ownership of a project can be extremely motivating for them…Of course this is very dependent on age group, but there is no reason why parents of younger kids shouldn’t be involved in designing their own solutions.

D

Hi David, I will find out what I can about the envision project. In the mean time I have added a link on the project page to the CABE (Commission for the Built Environment) report Future Health which looks at how urban design can help in the fight against obesity. I will prepare a summary of this document.
O