Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #115543

Ling-Ya Huang¹, Rachel Huxley², Federica Barzi², Kathy Jayne³, and Bruce Neal². (1) Heart and Vascular, Heart and Vascular Department,The george institute, University of Sydney, PO Box M201 Missenden Road Sydney NSW 2050 Australia, Sydney, Australia, +61-2-9993-4550, ahuang@thegeorgeinstitute.org, (2) The George Institute, University of Sydney, PO Box M201 Missenden Road Sydney NSW 2050 Australia, Sydney, Australia, (3) The George Institute , University of Sydney, PO Box M201 Missenden Road Sydney NSW 2050 Australia, Sydney, Australia

Background - The supermarket industry now services many customers through online Internet food shopping. The Internet shopping process offers a novel opportunity for the modification of dietary patterns. This project evaluated the effects on consumers' purchases of saturated fat of a computer program that provided fully automated, real-time, personally tailored advice recommending lower fat foods.

Methods – DIeT was a masked, randomized controlled trial that recruited consumers using an Internet shopping service offered by an established supermarket. 425 foods high in saturated fat and 126 alternates lower in saturated fat were identified. Individuals were assigned at random to receive either personally tailored advice that recommended the alternates lower in saturated fat (intervention) or more general advice about how to eat a low fat diet (control). The percent saturated fat content of the purchased foods was then compared between randomised groups.

Results - There were 497 randomised participants. The proportion of saturated fat in the foods purchased by the intervention group was half to one percent lower than in the intervention group (p<0.001). There was also good evidence that the intervention group learned to select items lower in saturated fat after just a few sessions. There were no differences in the average cost of the foods purchased by the two groups.

Conclusions - Tailored dietary advice offered to customers doing Internet shopping can bring about changes in food purchasing patterns likely to have significant public health implications. Because implementation is simple to initiate and maintain this strategy is likely to be highly cost-effective.

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