Advice provided while internet shopping can help people buy
healthier food We all know that people should eat less saturated
fat, but it can be hard to achieve changes in behaviour. Rachel
Huxley and colleagues from the George Institute for
International Health in Sydney, Australia, wanted to find out
whether dietary advice delivered through an internet shopping
system could help people make healthier food choices. They
conducted a randomized trial, offering participants using an
internet shopping system the chance to receive either general
dietary advice (the trial's control) or tailored advice which
prompted shoppers to replace items with alternatives lower in
saturated fat. The researchers found that participants receiving
tailored advice bought foods containing less saturated fat, on
average, than the participants only getting general advice.
These results show that low-cost technologies delivered through
the internet have the potential to motivate users to change
their behaviour. Rachel Huxley, from The