The BAR Project: Healthy Eating

The Problem:

Many students in the UK lead unhealthy lifestyles. Poor sleeping schedules, excessive drinking and the ease of takeaways are all factors that lead to the conclusion that British students do not have healthy diets. An online poll of 153 students, carried out by the BAR project, found that a shocking 94% of students felt they could eat more healthily. Also only eating an ungenerous average of just 2 of their five recommended fruit/vegetable portions daily.

Result from student survey

Why It’s Important:

Mental health in the student population has become of increasing concern with one in four students reporting mental health issues (Smith, 2016). A link between unhealthy eating and poor mental health (Scott & Happell, 2011) has influenced our project, with mental health issues affecting daily functioning for many sufferers which could impact the academic success of students. Furthermore, unhealthy eating links to fatigue and lack of attention (Goedendorp, Knoop, Schippers, & Bleijenberg, 2009) required in learning, as well as being a primary risk for numerous noncommunicable diseases (Tanton et al, 2015), that is diseases which are not inherited genetically or transmitted but are solely developed within one’s body. Most importantly, unhealthy diet is one of just four risks factors that are preventable in terms of these diseases (WHO, 2008-2013). The university student population are well-known to have poor diets; one British study researching the eating behaviours of students found only 19% could be categorised as having favourable eating behaviours, whereas more than 100 of the 345 undergraduates surveyed reported eating behaviours labelled as ‘mixed’ or ‘risky’ (Tanton et al, 2015).

In our own research, the BAR project found that, on average, students in the UK eat just 2 of their 5 recommended fruit and vegetables each day, from a sample size of 153 students. The reason for this popular recommendation is the high nutritional content of fruit and vegetables, including dietary fibre and vitamins which reduce the risk of obesity, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (Bazzano, 2005). Low fruit and vegetable intake has been associated with increased fast food intake (Racette et al, 2005) much of which is nutritionally lacking and calorie dense (Racette et al, 2003). In particular, many such as fried chicken and chips, are high in saturated fats which contribute to obesity. The BAR project aims to bring more attention to unhealthy eating as a preventable risk factor in order to enhance student’s wellbeing and academic attainment, but more so, to help people live healthier lives.

Target Audience:

The primary target group of our project is students, due to many students reporting (via a survey we carried out) that their eating behaviour became unhealthier once they started attending university. They also noted that buying fruit and vegetable is pricey, so it’s likely that the link between unhealthy eating and student life is the financial autonomy many students gain for the first time once they move away from home. Furthermore, many respondents stated the time constraints of cooking as a factor to eating either oven cooked ready meals or takeaway food often. As a result, our project aims to have the Warwick university library and learning grid provide free fruit during the week for studying students, and also to provide it in replacement of, or at least alongside their less healthy counterparts during exam season. We’re aware fruits are used mainly for snacking and not as full meals, so the BAR project also created a small handbook of affordable, beginner-friendly, healthy recipes for students to try out. In partnership with Warwick’s Study Happy team, these booklets will be given out at numerous well being events around campus. Another way we aimed to make fruit more accessible to students was by asking the local Canon Park Tesco to change their sign which says, ‘kids may take free fruit while shopping’ to ‘kids and students’. Short-term, the aim is to make healthy food more accessible to students and to encourage healthier eating habits for them. This would be beneficial in facilitating a healthier lifestyle which would contribute to better study time. On a wider scale, we hope to encourage and facilitate young people eating more fruit and vegetables, enjoying them, and choosing to include them more in their diet and lifestyle beyond their student years.

What We Did:

We first produced a printed questionnaire comprising 5 questions asking if the respondent believed they ate healthily, to which, surprisingly, over 40% answered yes. We hypothesised this could be due to the misleading nature of the question thus prompting us to produce another poll which we conducted online with a much larger sample, which found that over 90% believed they could eat healthier. In our survey, we asked for a reason as to why they didn’t think they ate healthily if their answer was no to first question. We discovered that cost and cooking motivation were the main problems, spurring us to create a recipe book with easy and cheap meals appropriate for vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters.

Set Up: Study Happy Session

We collaborated with the University of Warwick’s ‘Study Happy’ team, who assisted us in printing and distributing these recipe books, which have all been trialled by us ensuring the ingredients were relatively cheap and the method was simple. We also included a page with a meal planner, in the booklet, from which students could fill out what they plan to eat for the week, encouraging a healthier diet through engagement with the healthy recipe booklet. A page of healthy eating hints and tips also appears in the booklet, providing the reader ideas on simple methods to improve their diet. After finalising our design, we reached out to the university’s ‘Study Happy’ team, who encourage student well-being, collaborating with them to appear at one of their sessions where we were able to reach students one to one and talk to them about healthy eating and share our recipe book with them. This session allowed us to not only share our ideas with other students, but to acknowledge their own ideas on what a healthy diet and lifestyle entails. We set up a board where the students attending the session could write down their own tips for a healthy diet, introducing us to many new ideas on simple things that can be done to improve your diet. This session also enabled us to hand out some healthy snacks to the students studying in the library, as well as talk and engage in some activities with them, giving them a deserved break and undoubtedly aiding their studies. We finally created a poster to accompany us for this session in order to grab people’s attention and describe briefly what our aim is.

Healthy Eating Promotional Poster

Recipe Book (1/4)

Recipe Book (2/4)

Recipe Book (3/4)

Recipe Book (4/4)

Persuasion Techniques Used:

We have incorporated a few different persuasion techniques into our healthy eating campaign to try and get as much engagement and involvement as possible. One of the techniques we used is based on the Social Proof theory (Cialdini, 2009). This theory suggests that we rely on others around us to make informed decisions for ourselves, as we trust others’ opinions. To utilise this, we placed our poster on a flipchart at the Study Happy Active session and asked people to write down their own healthy eating tips. We noticed that many attendees spent time reading through and commenting on whether or not they’d incorporate the tips. We also implemented the principle of similarity as according to the Yale approach (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953) a message that comes from someone that you consider similar to you will be more convincing than if they were not. We incorporated this theory by inserting a line on the cover of the booklet saying ‘For Students, Made by Students’ illustrating the fact that we are among the same population (see Booklet front-cover).

Social Proof: students giving their advice

Furthermore, we wanted to encourage behaviour change by including a weekly meal planner. This applies the concept of implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999). As by encouraging students to plan out what their meals will be could increase their likelihood to stick to their plans and thus, eat more healthily. We encouraged the use of the meal planner at the ‘Study Happy’ session by sitting down with students to fill out meal planners in together offering suggestions and tips. This has been found to be a very effective method of encouraging behaviour change as illustrated in a study by Luszcynska & Schwarzer (2003) where people who were asked how and when they were going to complete a task were more likely to complete it than those who were merely asked whether they were going to or not. Thus, we believe that by asking students when and what they were going to have in their meal planner will encourage them to follow it through more than just giving them the recipe book with no follow up.

Study Happy Session

Conclusion:

We hope that this project will encourage students to eat healthier especially during periods of exam stress and deadlines. We also believe that if this project was to be extended in the future then there could be more editions of the recipe. Perhaps, an Instagram page could also be established for this project where students can engage and share their own recipes for other students to try and also post their attempts of our recipe. Where this is successful, this project may not only be limited those at the University of Warwick but also at other universities too.

Reference:

Bazzano, L. A. (2005). Dietary Intake of Fruit and Vegetables and Risk of Diabetes Mellitus and Cardiovascular Diseases, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.

Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Influence: Science and practice (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon

Goedendorp, M. M., Knoop, H., Schippers, G. M., & Bleijenberg, G. (2009). The lifestyle of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and the effect on fatigue and functional impairments. Journal of human nutrition and dietetics, 22(3), 226-231.

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: strong effects of simple plans. American psychologist, 54(7), 493.

Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelley, H. H. (1953). Communication and persuasion.

Luszczynska, A., & Schwarzer, R. (2003). Planning and self-efficacy in the adoption and maintenance of breast self-examination: A longitudinal study on self-regulatory cognitions. Psychology and Health, 18(1), 93-108.

Tanton, J., Dodd, L.J., Woodfield, L. (2015) Eating Behaviours of British University Students: A Cluster Analysis on a Neglected Issue. Advances in Preventive Medicine, (2015)

Racette, S. B., Deusinger, S.S. and Deusinger, R. H. (2003). Obesity: overview of prevalence, etiology, and treatment. Physical Therapy, (83)3, 276–288.

Racette, S. B., Deusinger, S. S., Strube, M. J., Highstein, G. R., and Deusinger, R. H. (2005). Weight changes, exercise, and dietary patterns during freshman and sophomore years of college. Journal of American College Health, (53)6, 245–251.

Scott, D., & Happell, B. (2011). The high prevalence of poor physical health and unhealthy lifestyle behaviours in individuals with severe mental illness. Issues in mental health nursing, 32(9), 589-597.