Health professionals and schools could encourage more healthy diets by emphasising that eating fruit can be enjoyable; that is a suggestion from findings of new research from Bournemouth University.
“We know that people in the UK, especially children, do not eat enough fruits and vegetables,” said Katherine Appleton, Professor in Psychology at BU, who led the work.
“The findings of this research sound so obvious – use the fruits and vegetables that people actually like to persuade them to eat more, and they might actually do it! But it is something that health professionals and people who work with children need to tap into much more,” she continued.
The research took the form of two studies and has been published in the journal Appetite.
In the first study, 142 participants were put into one of three groups. The first group was told to imagine a scenario where they were eating a piece of fruit and really enjoying it, people in the second group were told to imagine they were eating fruit but not enjoying it and the final group was also told to imagine eating fruit but were not given any direction on how they should feel.
The results found that those who had pictured themselves experiencing more enjoyment were more likely to say that they would eat more fruit in the coming days and were more positive towards fruit.
In the second study, 221 participants were allocated into two groups and shown a set of posters. All posters included a message to eat more fruit, but the first group’s posters had pictures of grapes and strawberries – which had been identified in the first study as being among the most enjoyable fruits to eat. The second group’s posters contained images of apples and bananas which were seen as ‘standard’ fruit.
The participants who experienced more enjoyment from the fruit on the posters were again more likely to say they would eat fruit in the coming days and were again more positive about fruit. These participants were also more likely to take a piece of fruit from the free snacks that were on offer at the end of the trial; they also consumed more from a bag of free apples which several participants were offered to take home with them after the trial.
“These were very encouraging findings because these are measures of people’s behaviour, not just their intentions,” said Professor Appleton. “Anyone can say they have good intentions after taking part in a study. But, of course, it is actually eating more fruit that will make them healthier, not their intentions, so measures of behaviour are much more valuable,” she added.
“The second study in particular is also something that public health professionals could introduce very easily. It could be straight-forward to put posters in canteens, schools and GP surgeries, highlighting that eating fruit can be enjoyable” Professor Appleton explained. “There are other aspects of posters also to consider, but this was as simple as just changing the wording and pictures on posters to improve people’s health!”
The study “A role for enjoyment for encouraging fruit consumption” has been published in Appetite with DOI 10.1016/j.appet.2023.106609
