Information seeking from media and family and friends increases fruit and vegetable consumption among cancer patients

Increasing fruit and vegetable intake has been a focus of efforts to reduce rates of obesity among Americans, and the incidence of chronic diseases such as heart disease and some types of cancer. According to a review by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, “diets containing substantial and varied amounts of fruits and vegetables could prevent 20 percent or more of all cases of cancer.” Previous research suggests positive effects of health information seeking on prevention behaviors such as diet, exercise and fruit and vegetable consumption. The current study builds upon this research by examining the effect of cancer patients' active information seeking from media and interpersonal sources on fruit and vegetable consumption. The results of this longitudinal study are based on data collected from a randomly drawn sample from the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry, comprising breast, prostate and colorectal cancer patients who completed mail surveys in the Fall of 2006 and 2007. The response rate for baseline subjects (N=2013) was 85% and 76% for follow-up subjects (N=1293). Using multiple imputation to treat missing data and propensity scoring to adjust for effects of possible confounders, analyses thus far have shown a positive lagged effect of information seeking at baseline on the individual level of fruit and vegetable consumption at follow-up. While the effect size is small, on the aggregate level this finding is significant and indicates that active information seeking from media and interpersonal sources may lead to improved nutrition among the cancer patient population.