Diet Habit
Conditions
Keywords
self-regulation, self-monitoring, goal-setting, meat reduction, multi-component intervention
Brief summary
This randomised controlled trial will test the effectiveness of a self-regulation intervention for reducing meat consumption in people who are motivated to change their meat-eating habits.
Detailed description
An individually randomised, two-arm, parallel-group design will be employed, assessing superiority of the self-regulation intervention over a control. The intervention aims to support individuals in self-monitoring their meat consumption, learning about the impact of their food choices on their health and the environment and setting personal meat reduction goals as well as implementing those goals to reduce meat consumption in manageable steps. After a baseline week of self-monitoring meat consumption, the intervention will be delivered over four weeks, followed by a four-week long maintenance phase.The study will be delivered remotely through our bespoke website developed specifically for the intervention. All participants will complete a baseline questionnaire that asks about their demographic characteristics, assesses their self-efficacy regarding consumption of meat-free dishes and asks about their meat-eating identity. Participants will be then randomised 1:1 to the control or intervention group. During the baseline week (week 1, days 2-5), participants will be invited to complete a meat frequency questionnaire, daily, each time looking back at the previous day. After the baseline week, participants will follow their assigned condition for eight weeks. In the control condition, participants will be asked to try and reduce their meat intake, without further guidance. In the intervention condition, participants will be guided through an experimentation process for the first four weeks. This includes setting a meat reduction goal, tracking meat intake daily, planning and implementing an action to reduce meat intake daily and evaluating those actions weekly. After these four weeks (weeks 2-5), intervention group participants will enter a four-week long maintenance phase during which they will be asked to continue with the actions they found useful in the previous weeks. During the fifth and ninth weeks, all participants will be invited to complete the meat frequency questionnaire daily. On the last day of both the fifth and ninth weeks, participants will be asked to complete the self-efficacy and meat-identity questionnaires used in the baseline session again. On the last day of the fifth-week participants of the intervention condition will be further asked to complete a questionnaire to evaluate the intervention. On the last day of the ninth-week participants of the control condition will be asked what kinds of strategies they used to actively reduce their meat intake in the last eight weeks.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALOPTIMISE
Self-regulation intervention
Sponsors
University of Oxford
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
OTHER
Masking
SINGLE (Subject)
Intervention model description
Individually randomised, two-arm, parallel-group randomised controlled trial
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Be willing and able to give informed consent * Be resident in the UK * Self report to speak English fluently * Self-report to eat meat at least five times per week * Be willing to reduce their meat intake * Have access to devices compatible with the delivery format of the intervention
Exclusion criteria
* Enrolled in another dietary intervention study * Trying to lose weight
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in mean daily meat consumption from baseline to follow-up 1, comparing intervention and control groups. | five weeks | Meat consumption was measured with meat-frequency questionnaires administered daily during the baseline week and follow-up 1. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in mean daily meat consumption from baseline to follow-up 2, comparing intervention and control groups. | nine weeks | Meat consumption was measured with meat-frequency questionnaires administered daily during the baseline week and follow-up 2. |
| Change in mean daily meat consumption from follow-up 1 to follow-up 2, comparing intervention and control groups. | nine weeks | Meat consumption was measured with meat-frequency questionnaires administered daily during follow-up 1 and follow-up 2. |
| Change in mean daily consumption of meat subgroups from baseline to both follow-ups, comparing intervention and control groups. | five and nine weeks | Meat subgroups assessed: red meat, processed meat, and red & processed meat. |
| Change in meat-free self-efficacy from baseline to both follow-ups, comparing intervention and control groups. | five and nine weeks | Self-efficacy was measured using three items from the self-efficacy scale Lacroix & Gifford (2019): I lack the cooking skills to prepare meat-free meals I don't know what to eat instead of meat I don't have enough willpower to not eat meat Answers were given on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. |
| Acceptability of the self-regulation intervention for reducing meat consumption | five weeks | Acceptability was assessed with an intervention evaluation questionnaire administered at follow-up 1 to intervention group participants. The questionnaire asked participants to rate the usefulness of individual intervention components (tracking meat consumption daily, health/environmental feedback, action planning) and additional resources (weekly action evaluation, downloadable action diary, downloadable action overview, links to other resources, ability to review your journey) on a scale of 1 (not useful) to 10 (very useful). We also asked if participants had any additional feedback - this was a free-text question and responses were coded and analysed qualitatively. |
| Percentage of meat frequency questionnaires completed by participants | nine weeks | Intervention group participants could complete a maximum of 42 meat frequency questionnaires (daily weeks 1-5 and 9) over the study period, while control group participants could complete a maximum of 21 meat frequency questionnaires (daily weeks 1, 5 and 9). For each participant we calculated their percentage of meat frequency questionnaires submitted (i.e. X/42\* 100 or X/21\* 100). We then looked at the percentage of participants who completed all sessions, and at least 80% of sessions, in both groups. |
| Change in participants meat-eating identity from baseline to both follow-ups, comparing intervention and control groups. | five and nine weeks | Meat identity questionnaire was used to categorise people as follows: 1) meat-eating identity, 2) reduced meat-eating identity, and 3) non-meat eating identity. Participants who moved from 1 to 2, 1 to 3, or 2 to 3 were coded as positive meat-identity change=1 and other changes/no change were coded as positive meat-identity change=0 |
| Comparison of actions taken by the control group participants and those taken by the intervention group. | nine weeks | Control group participants completed a questionnaire at follow-up 2 which asked what strategies they had tried to reduce their meat consumption. Reponses were free-text and explored qualitatively. We assessed which meat reduction actions were chosen by our intervention group participants and compared these to those reported by the control group. |
Other
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Outlier sensitivity analysis of primary outcome | five weeks | We ran a sensitivity analysis repeating the primary analysis (change in mean daily meat consumption from baseline to follow-up 1) excluding days in which participant total meat intake exceeded 1.5 kg (measured by the meat frequency questionnaires) to assess the effect of outliers. |
| Barriers to adherence to meat reduction actions | five weeks | Barriers were identified by open-text responses to daily (Weeks 2-5) action completion question when participants indicated they didn't stick to their action: Please tell us a little bit more about why you were unable to stick to the action you had planned. |
Countries
United Kingdom
Outcome results
None listed