Browse the evidence

Time discounting measures using food rewards show stronger associations with obesity and unhealthy diets than monetary rewards.

When assessing your eating habits or impulsivity, focus on food-specific choices rather than general financial decisions. Your tendency to choose immediate food rewards is a more accurate predictor of your dietary health than how you handle money.

High cost, limited transportation, and poor quality/variety of fresh produce act as primary community-level barriers to fruit and vegetable consumption in low-income populations, thereby increasing obesity risk.

For low-income individuals, buying healthy food is often blocked by price and access, not just choice. To eat more fruits and vegetables, look for community programs that subsidize produce, visit farmers markets or flea markets for better variety and price, and prioritize stores that display fresh produce well. If transportation is an issue, carpooling or using community resources to access better stores may be necessary.

A sustained, multi-strategy social marketing campaign targeting awareness and behavioral intent significantly increases population-level fruit and vegetable consumption, with a statistically significant effect on vegetable intake.

To increase vegetable intake, implement a sustained, multi-channel public health campaign focusing on clear, simple messaging (e.g., '2 fruit, 5 veg') and addressing practical barriers like preparation time. The Western Australian 'Go for 2&5' campaign successfully increased vegetable consumption by 0.6 servings per day over three years through mass media, point-of-sale promotions, and community engagement.

Longitudinal home sleep monitoring using portable devices enables the identification of individual sleep patterns and correlations with modifiable behaviors (e.g., exercise, diet, stress), facilitating personalized health optimization and treatment strategies.

Use a home sleep monitor (like a wrist actigraphy device or bed sensor) for at least two weeks to establish a baseline. Look for patterns: does your sleep quality drop after late caffeine, high stress, or intense evening exercise? Use these insights to adjust your daily habits. The goal is not perfect sleep every night, but understanding your unique triggers to optimize your routine.

Interventions promoting stair use effectively increase physical activity at work, although the evidence quality is moderate due to study design limitations.

Encourage taking the stairs. Use signs or make the stairwell attractive. It’s a simple way to boost activity at work, even if the effect size is small.

Personalized behavioral interventions increase overall physical activity but have inconsistent effects on physical activity specifically at work.

Use goal setting and feedback to boost your overall activity. Don't expect it to automatically increase activity during work hours if your job is physically constrained.

COVID-19 lockdown and confinement measures are associated with a high prevalence (65%) of symptomatic deterioration in individuals with eating disorders, including increased shape/eating concerns and exercise obsession, despite mixed findings on actual BMI changes in longitudinal subgroups.

If you have an eating disorder or obesity, the lockdown environment itself is a significant risk factor for symptom worsening, not just your personal choices. The data shows 65% of ED patients experienced deterioration. Focus on maintaining therapeutic contact and structured routines, as the loss of these external supports is a primary driver of symptom escalation. Be aware that 'feeling fine' on a scale of weight may mask significant psychological distress and behavioral shifts like increased exercise obsession.

Chatbot interventions significantly improve sleep duration and quality, with multicomponent interventions (chatbot plus other tools) being more effective than chatbot-only interventions.

For better sleep, use a chatbot that integrates with a wearable device or allows you to log your sleep habits. This combined approach is more effective than using a chatbot alone.

Providing nutrition information (labels, food guides) is necessary but insufficient to change consumer food choices because knowledge does not override competing preferences for taste, convenience, and price.

Knowing what is healthy is not enough to make you buy it. Your brain prioritizes taste, price, and convenience over nutrition labels. To actually eat healthier, do not rely on reading complex labels. Instead, use simplified visual cues (like star ratings), set defaults (like choosing water as the default beverage), and make healthy options the easiest and most visible choice in your environment.

On-body sensors (inertial, acoustic, physiological) can accurately detect eating events (gestures, chewing, swallowing) and classify food types, offering a continuous alternative to manual logging.

Wearable sensors can track your eating habits automatically by detecting gestures, chewing sounds, and swallowing. While current prototypes may be uncomfortable, they offer a more accurate and continuous view of your diet than manual logging.

Continuous, location-independent monitoring via on-body sensors is superior to ambient-embedded sensors for capturing real-world eating behaviors, including snacks and meals outside the home.

To get a complete picture of your diet, tracking must happen everywhere you go, not just at home. On-body sensors provide this continuous, location-independent monitoring.

Implementing a 20% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) reduces consumption, leading to significant health-adjusted life year (HALY) gains and healthcare cost savings, with the greatest relative health benefits accruing to the most socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.

A 20% tax on sugary drinks is projected to save the Australian healthcare system billions and add significant healthy life years, particularly for disadvantaged communities. The extra cost to consumers is small (around $35/year for the lowest income group), but the health system savings and health gains are much larger for these same groups.

Higher-dose exercise (higher intensity, duration, or frequency) may improve overall functioning and depressive symptoms more than moderate-dose exercise, but compliance is lower.

While higher intensity exercise might offer slight benefits for overall physical functioning, moderate intensity is sufficient for reducing depression and is easier to sustain. Prioritize consistency over intensity to avoid dropout.

BMI and waist circumference are practical, economically viable predictors of insulin resistance, despite visceral fat being the strongest biological predictor.

For routine health checks, use waist circumference and BMI. They are cheap, easy, and good enough predictors of insulin resistance risk, even if they are not as accurate as MRI or DEXA scans for measuring visceral fat.

Among Spanish university students, higher diet quality is significantly associated with the practice of physical activity, while smoking status (non-smoking) is also independently associated with being physically active.

If you are a student trying to improve your diet, incorporating regular physical activity is a strong predictor of better diet quality. Conversely, focusing on diet quality is associated with being physically active. Address these habits together rather than in isolation.

Non-smoking status is significantly associated with physical activity practice in Spanish university students, independent of diet quality and gender.

For students, being a non-smoker is significantly associated with being physically active. If you are trying to start exercising, addressing smoking cessation may support your physical activity goals, as these behaviors tend to cluster.

Higher number of meals consumed daily is positively correlated with higher diet quality scores (DDS, MDS, DGS, GDQS) in Spanish university students.

Students who eat more meals per day tend to have higher diet quality. Consider eating more frequently rather than skipping meals to improve your overall diet.

High perceived stress is directly associated with unhealthy eating behaviors (emotional eating and uncontrolled eating) but does NOT influence weight status through these behaviors.

Stress reliably triggers emotional and uncontrolled eating in this population. However, changing these behaviors alone may not reduce severe obesity if the direct physiological stress response (e.g., cortisol) remains unaddressed.

Government-imposed confinement and mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant decrease in physical activity (vigorous, moderate, and walking) and a significant increase in sedentary behavior (hours spent sitting) among pregnant women.

If you are pregnant and face mobility restrictions, expect your physical activity levels to drop significantly. To counter this, prioritize low-impact indoor movements or walking if permitted, and be aware that 'lack of space' and 'fatigue' are common barriers that need proactive management.

Wearable passive sensing technologies for food intake monitoring provide objective, real-time data that reduces the subjective bias and recall errors inherent in manual self-reporting methods, thereby enabling more reliable dietary assessment and effective health interventions.

If you struggle with remembering what you eat or under-reporting your intake, consider using a wearable food monitoring device. These devices automatically track eating events (chewing, swallowing) or food images, removing the mental burden of manual logging. While not yet perfect for all food types, they offer a more objective view of your habits than memory-based diaries, helping you and your healthcare provider make better decisions.

Designers should consider including an extensive food database, a food scanner, and provision of diaries to support self-monitoring.

App designers should include an extensive food database, a food scanner, and provision of diaries to support self-monitoring.

A multicomponent sleep intervention combining Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) and Hypnotherapy for Insomnia (HT-I) significantly improves subjective sleep quality and reduces insomnia symptoms in university students.

If you are a student struggling with sleep, consider a structured program that combines behavioral changes (like consistent sleep/wake times and relaxation techniques) with psychological tools (like hypnosis or stress management). Standard sleep hygiene advice may not be enough if you have high anxiety about sleep or irregular schedules. Look for programs specifically designed for students that address exam stress and chronotype.

Community-level environmental interventions (e.g., EPODE) are more effective for preventing obesity than individual dietary counseling, particularly in children.

Advocate for or participate in community-level changes that make healthy choices easier, such as better access to parks, healthy food options in local stores, and school-based health programs. Individual willpower is often insufficient against an environment designed to promote obesity.

Food and menu labeling has inconclusive or minimal effects on consumer behavior and sales.

Do not rely on food labeling alone to improve public health. It has minimal impact on sales or consumption. Combine it with other strategies like subsidies, taxes, or education to be effective.