New Study Reveals How To Get Children To Stop Eating Unhealthy Snacks



According to the study, a new intervention encourages schoolchildren to consume fewer unhealthy snacks.

A fresh approach encouraging pupils to consume fewer unhealthy snacks has been successfully evaluated by psychologists.

Secondary school students frequently overestimate the amount of unhealthy snacking among their classmates, which raises their likelihood of consuming unhealthy snacks themselves, according to researchers from Staffordshire University.

"In focus groups with 11 to 13-year-olds done prior to the intervention, we discovered they knew what healthy eating behaviors were, as well as the short-term and long-term impacts, but didn't always implement these behaviors," said Sian Calvert, who oversaw the research across a number of studies.

Students were skipping meals as a result of their frequent unhealthy snacking, which appeared to have an impact on how often they consumed normal meals. The focus group discussions also revealed that peers had a significant influence on food patterns in this age range.

According to Public Health England, teens who regularly consume unhealthy snacks are more likely to become overweight or obese, which raises their risk of developing long-term health problems.

Children who live in the poorest areas of the United Kingdom are twice as likely to be overweight or obese than children who reside in places with high socioeconomic status, according to statistics from the NHS.

To help with this issue, Sian and associates developed a school-based intervention using the Social Norms Approach (SNA), a technique that clarifies misconceptions about other people's behavior.

Dr. Rob Dempsey from Manchester Metropolitan University and Dr. Rachel Povey, associate professor of health psychology at Staffordshire University, along with Emeritus Professor David Clark-Carter, conducted the study.

According to Dr. Rachel Povey, adolescence is a crucial stage for rapid growth and development, but it is also the time when kids start to take more responsibility for their diets and frequently form bad eating habits. In order to have access to a wider variety of foods, secondary school students may stop at a store on the way to class or buy snacks on the way home.

Both schools received information on healthy eating, and students participating in the SNA intervention also got feedback to address their misconceptions about their peers' snacking habits. An advisory council made up of significantly older Year 8 pupils advised that this be presented through an interactive poster-making activity.

Following the intervention, participants in the SNA intervention significantly reduced their consumption of unhealthy snacks, improved their judgments of other students' actions, and increased their attitudes against unhealthy snacking.

Our findings are significant, according to Sian, because it is advised that young people consume a healthy, balanced diet and limit their consumption of harmful snacks to to a few times each week. This will help them grow normally and lessen their risk of developing long-term health problems.

This study suggests that the Social Norms Approach is a workable and potentially useful strategy to utilize in schools to encourage good eating habits at a formative age.

An in-school social norms approach intervention for reducing unhealthy snacking behaviors among 11–12-year-olds was published in the British Journal of Health Psychology on January 26, 2022 by Sian M. Calvert, Robert C. Dempsey, Rachel Povey, and David Clark-Carter.


By STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY 

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