Leveraging feedback to improve healthy food & beverage choices
Energy-dense foods purchased outside the home are an important contributor to the obesity epidemic facing our society. Can public health interventions that target the point of purchase help support...
View ArticleFriday Feedback Favourites
Each Friday (OK, today’s Saturday… I’m a little behind these days!), I share a collection of stories, research, or other news and notes related to the role of feedback in complex systems that catch my...
View ArticleImproving healthy food & beverage choices through choice architecture
In my previous blog post, I discussed a study by Thorndike et al that looked at how both labeling healthy and unhealthy food choices with colour codes affected the purchase of healthy foods and...
View ArticleLearning is a feedback process
Learning depends on feedback. This is not a surprising statement, and is a common theme within many different academic disciplines, including Systems Thinking (as discussed by Sterman, Meadows,...
View ArticleCake or Fruit: Non-linearity in Decision-Making
Previously I’ve discussed the work of Resnicow and Vaughn (1), who suggest that traditional models of behaviour change fail to embrace the complexity of human behaviour. They call for a new paradigm to...
View ArticleMental Models of Obesity
Previously I suggested that in order for health behaviour change to be successful, we not only need to alter the decisions we make, but that we also need to modify the habits, routines,...
View ArticleIs it about the journey or the destination? Goals vs. experience in...
“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.” Don Williams, Jr. The same sentiments are echoed by Emerson,...
View ArticleFailed Feedback: Barriers to Behaviour Change
Why does feedback fail? As I’ve discussed previously, learning (or behaviour change) is a feedback process. According to Sterman (1), there are two important requirements that must be met in order for...
View ArticleWhat’s your weight loss “style”? The role of heterogeneity in weight management
A new perspective on data from the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) by Ogden et al. (2012) (1) suggests that individuals who successfully maintain weight loss fall into four distinct categories,...
View Article“Smart fork”: Useful feedback tool or dietary gimmick?
Do you eat too quickly? Or eat too much? A novel tool, the HAPIfork, is designed to track eating habits, such as the number of forkfuls of food consumed and the speed of consumption. Sensors within the...
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