You Are What You Eat: A Randomised Controlled Trial of an Appearance-based Dietary Intervention

Perception Lab

Status: Completed

Conditions: Fruit and Vegetable Consumption

Treatments: Behavioral: Generic appearance intervention; Behavioral: Personalised appearance intervention; Behavioral: Information-only

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Industry

Identifiers

NCT01511484

PerceptionLab001

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study investigated whether illustration of the facial appearance benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption is able to motivate increased intake of this food group. The investigators hypothesize that individuals witnessing illustrations of the impact of a healthy diet will exhibit improvements in diet relative to a control group receiving only information on the health-benefits of this food group.

Enrollment: 73 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 61 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Student or staff member at University of St Andrews
• Has access to email account to receive link to weekly online questionnaire.

Exclusion criteria

• Exited study before completion
• Unable to make dietary changes due to a medical condition

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

73 participants in 3 patient groups

Information-only

Experimental group

Description:

Selected pages from the British National Health Service (NHS) information booklets \["5 A Day, Just Eat More (fruit \& veg)"; pages i, ii, 12-15, 20 \& 21\] and \["5 A Day, Just Eat More (fruit \& veg): What's it all about?"; pages i-ii)\] were provided to all participants on completion of baseline questionnaires. The pages provided information on recommended portion sizes, meal planning, health benefits and answered frequently asked diet-related questions

Treatment:

Behavioral: Information-only

Generic-appearance intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in the generic appearance intervention group received images to illustrate the impact of fruit and vegetable consumption on skin appearance. Participants in this group were presented with gender congruent stimuli, constructed by averaging the facial shape and colour of four male/female faces. Participants viewed the gender-congruent set of the resulting stimuli in two forms. Firstly, after completion of baseline questionnaires, images were displayed on a computer monitor. Participants were instructed to select what they perceived as the healthiest face colour, which was recorded by the computer program over two trials. Participants in this group also received a take-home photo quality leaflet to further illustrate the effect of fruit and vegetable consumption on skin colour.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Generic appearance intervention

Personalised appearance intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in this group received stimuli manipulated in identical ways to that received by the generic appearance-intervention group, except the illustrations were performed upon images of the participant's own face.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Personalised appearance intervention