The impact of a lifestyle behaviour change program on healthcare costs: Quasi-experimental real-world evidence from an open-access mobile health app in the Netherlands.

Objective: Recognizing the substantial role of modifiable risk factors such as physical inactivity, unhealthy diets, and substance use in driving global healthcare expenses, this study aims to assess the impact of a lifestyle behaviour change mobile health (mHealth) app on healthcare costs within a real-world setting.

Methods: Employing a difference-in-difference approach, this research compared healthcare costs between users of an mHealth app (treatment group) and a propensity score-matched control group of non-users. The study included data from 15,506 participants in the Netherlands, covering healthcare cost records collected from 2015 to 2019.

The Effect of Periodic Email Prompts on Participant Engagement With a Behavior Change mHealth App: Longitudinal Study.

Background: Following the need for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases, mobile health (mHealth) apps are increasingly used for promoting lifestyle behavior changes. Although mHealth apps have the potential to reach all population segments, providing accessible and personalized services, their effectiveness is often limited by low participant engagement and high attrition rates.

Objective: This study concerns a large-scale, open-access mHealth app, based in the Netherlands, focused on improving the lifestyle behaviors of its participants.

Adoption of the Website and Mobile App of a Preventive Health Program Across Neighborhoods With Different Socioeconomic Conditions in the Netherlands: Longitudinal Study.

Background: Socioeconomic disparities in the adoption of preventive health programs represent a well-known challenge, with programs delivered via the web serving as a potential solution. The preventive health program examined in this study is a large-scale, open-access web-based platform operating in the Netherlands, which aims to improve the health behaviors and wellness of its participants.

Objective: This study aims to examine the differences in the adoption of the website and mobile app of a web-based preventive health program across socioeconomic groups.

Can graphic warning labels reduce the consumption of meat?

The classification of red meat as "probably carcinogenic" and processed meat as "carcinogenic" was followed by pleas to place warning labels, akin to those used for tobacco products, onto meat products. These labels educate people about the health risks associated with the target behavior and are typically accompanied by graphic imagery that elicits disgust (e.g.

No Way, That's Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives.

Two prominently discussed sustainable food alternatives-lab-meat and edible insects-elicit disgust among consumers, thereby preventing acceptance. While providing prospective consumers with more information on, for instance, the environmental benefits of lab-meat has shown some success in increasing consumer acceptance, we argue that the disgust response-the main barrier to the societal acceptance of these foods-is not addressed. This is, we argue, because disgust is not the result of misperceptions (e.

Propelling pride to promote healthy food choices among entity and incremental theorists.

Past research suggests that people's beliefs about the malleability of their body weight influence their motivation to engage in healthful behaviors: people who perceive their body weight as fixed (entity theorists) engage less in healthful behaviors than people who perceive their body weight as changeable (incremental theorists). Accordingly, current health interventions frequently aim at shifting entity theorists' beliefs about the malleability of their body weight. Instead of trying to change these beliefs, we test whether the elicitation of pride from past achievements can serve as an intervention to promote healthful behaviors among entity theorists.

Losses tune differently than gains: how gains and losses shape attentional scope and influence goal pursuit.

Research on the asymmetric effect of negative versus positive affective states (induced by gains or losses) on scope of attention, both at a perceptual and a conceptual level, is abundant. However, little is known about the moderating effect of anticipating gains or losses versus actually experiencing them and about any downstream consequences of these effects on goal-directed behaviour. In two studies, we show that gains versus losses induce qualitatively different processes.

A packaged mindset: How elongated packages induce healthy mindsets.

Product packaging is an important instrument for marketers to draw consumer attention to specific product information and influence product perceptions. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether exposure to a product's packaging can also activate specific mindsets that, once activated, alter consumers' food perceptions. The results of three experiments demonstrate that elongated containers activate a health mindset that influences both consumers' perception of the packaged food product but also their health perceptions of subsequently encountered food.

Stop spoon dosing: milliliter instructions reduce inclination to spoon dosing.

Background: Does the use of teaspoon units in dose recommendations on Drug Facts panels of liquid medicine lead to dosing errors and could any such errors be reduced if millimeter units were used instead?

Findings: Participants given dosing instructions in teaspoon units were twice as likely to choose a kitchen teaspoon as those given instructions in milliliter units (31.3 vs. 15.

Portion size me: plate-size induced consumption norms and win-win solutions for reducing food intake and waste.

Research on the self-serving of food has empirically ignored the role that visual consumption norms play in determining how much food we serve on different sized dinnerware. We contend that dinnerware provides a visual anchor of an appropriate fill-level, which in turn, serves as a consumption norm (Study 1). The trouble with these dinnerware-suggested consumption norms is that they vary directly with dinnerware size--Study 2 shows Chinese buffet diners with large plates served 52% more, ate 45% more, and wasted 135% more food than those with smaller plates.

Larger bowl size increases the amount of cereal children request, consume, and waste.

Objective: To examine whether larger bowls bias children toward requesting more food from the adults who serve them.

Study Design: Study 1 was a between-subject design involving 69 preschool-age children who were randomized to receive either a small (8 oz) or large (16 oz) cereal bowl and were asked to tell researchers how much cereal they wanted for a morning snack. Study 2 was a within-subject design involving 18 school-age children at a summer camp who were given a small (8 oz) cereal bowl on one day and a large (16 oz) cereal bowl on another day and asked by a cafeteria server how much cereal and milk they wanted for breakfast.

Extraverted children are more biased by bowl sizes than introverts.

Extraverted children are hypothesized to be most at risk for over-serving and overeating due to environmental cues--such as the size of dinnerware. A within-subject field study of elementary school students found that extraverted children served themselves 33.1% more cereal in larger bowls (16-oz) than in smaller (12-oz) bowls, whereas introverted children were unaffected by bowl size (+5.

Fast food restaurant lighting and music can reduce calorie intake and increase satisfaction.

Recent research shows that environmental cues such as lighting and music strongly bias the eating behavior of diners in laboratory situations. This study examines whether changing the atmosphere of a fast food restaurant would change how much patrons ate. The results indicated that softening the lighting and music led people to eat less, to rate the food as more enjoyable, and to spend just as much.

How negative experiences shape long-term food preferences. Fifty years from the World War II combat front.

How does a person's first experience with a foreign or unfamiliar food shape their long-term preference and behavior toward that food? To investigate this, 493 American veterans of World War II were surveyed about their preference for Japanese and Chinese food. Pacific veterans who experienced high levels of combat had a stronger dislike for these Asian foods than those Pacific veterans experiencing lower levels of combat. Consistent with expectations, combat experience for European veterans had no impact on their preference for Asian food.

Ice cream illusions bowls, spoons, and self-served portion sizes.

Background: Because people eat most of what they serve themselves, any contextual cues that lead them to over-serve should lead them to over-eat. In building on the size-contrast illusion, this research examines whether the size of a bowl or serving spoon unknowingly biases how much a person serves and eats.

Methods: The 2 x 2 between-subjects design involved 85 nutrition experts who were attending an ice cream social to celebrate the success of a colleague in 2002.

Shape of glass and amount of alcohol poured: comparative study of effect of practice and concentration.

Objective: To determine whether people pour different amounts into short, wide glasses than into tall, slender ones.

Design: College students practised pouring alcohol into a standard glass before pouring into larger glasses; bartenders poured alcohol for four mixed drinks either with no instructions or after being told to take their time.

Setting: University town and large city, United States.