How to change adolescent girls diet : traditional leaflets or individual computerized intervention ?

15 March 2010

Researchers of Plymouth University tempted a totally new experience with adolescent girls in order to compare the efficiency of a personalized computerized intervention and of a traditional leaflet aiming at increasing their consumption of some types of food, nutritionally good (fruits, vegetables, brown bread and wholegrain cereals). The study revealed an increase in brown bread consumption which was significantly higher with the computerized intervention but it couldn’t show any significant difference between the two types of communication for the other products. Thus, the results of the computerized intervention were rather disappointing even though this one, thanks to its tailored specificity, was globally more appreciated. Therefore, more efforts are still needed to motivate adolescent girls to change their diet.