Takeaway apps ‘should push healthy options’ to help customers lose weight
TAKEAWAY apps should bump up healthier restaurants to curb obesity, research suggests.
Featuring cleaner eateries more prominently, automatically selecting smaller meals and showing calorie counts cut how many calories people ordered by up to 15 per cent.
Around 25 million Brits now use apps like Deliveroo and Just Eat — a 55 per cent jump since 2015.
Experts warn half of meals are at least 1,000 calories, nearly 50 per cent of an adult’s daily intake.
Dr Filippo Bianchi, of the charity Nesta, said: “This doesn’t mean that we always have to swap pizza for a green salad.
“Even initiatives that make it easy to make small changes to what we eat could help to slowly reduce obesity, if delivered at scale.
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“Our findings suggest that simple interventions could help people select lower-calorie options on delivery apps without the need to remove less healthy options.”
Around 38 per cent of Brits are overweight and a further quarter are obese.
Being too fat puts you at risk of deadly diseases, including cancer, heart diseases and type 2 diabetes.
Research shows the heaviest adults cost the NHS nearly twice as much to treat.
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The latest study, presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Dublin, was done by experts at Nesta's Behavioural Insights Team, known as the “nudge unit”.
One trial made lower calorie options more prominent on a simulated food delivery app to see how it affected 9,003 adults’ choices.
Restaurants and foods were listed randomly for a control group.
Others had low-calorie options at the top of menus and lower calorie restaurants at the top of the restaurant selection page.
The study found that those in the control group ordered a meal that contained 1,382 calories on average.
Putting lower calorie options at the top of the app saw people order 209 fewer calories per order.
Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: “This meticulous research ticks all the boxes.
“When the app allows the customer to avoid opting for unhealthy choices and directs them to lower calorie options, this is just what the doctor ordered.”
Katherine Jenner, of Obesity Health Alliance, said: “This interesting research shows how we might be able to put healthier food back in the spotlight.
“If food companies could be incentivised to make their healthier options more appealing, we could be taking our first steps to making the healthy choice the easy choice for everyone.”
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A Just Eat spokesperson said: “We recognise that we are in a unique position to support the takeaway sector.
“We continue to work with our partners to explore how they can grow their range to meet customer needs and preferences.”