Research

Adherence

Population-level nutrition interventions focusing exclusively on individual behavior change have limited success because they ignore the social structural conditions (rules and resources) that constrain or enable food choices.

To improve population health, interventions must move beyond telling people what to eat. Instead, they must address the social structures that make healthy choices difficult, such as ensuring affordable access to food, modifying school policies, and supporting family meal norms.

ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Disappointingly, behaviour-based nutrition education approaches to changing population eating patterns have met with limited success.
Treena Delormier et al. · Sociology of Health & Illness · 2009

Why this rating

This is a theoretical framework paper citing observational and sociological studies, not a randomized controlled trial.

Source

Food and eating as social practice – understanding eating patterns as social phenomena and implications for public health

Treena Delormier et al. · Sociology of Health & Illness · 2009

DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2008.01128.x

narrative_reviewCited 406×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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