Assessment of evaluations made to healthy eating policies in Europe: a review within the EATWELL Project

Pérez-Cueto, F. J. A., Aschemann-Witzel, J., Shankar, B., Brambila Macias, J., Bech-Larsen, T., Mazzocchi, M., Capacci, S., Saba , A., Turrini, A., Niedzwiedzka, B., Piorecka, B., Kozioł-Kozakowska , A., Wills, J., Traill, B. and Verbeke, W. (2012) Assessment of evaluations made to healthy eating policies in Europe: a review within the EATWELL Project. Public Health Nutrition, 15 (8). pp. 1489-1496. ISSN 1475-2727 doi: 10.1017/S1368980011003107

Abstract/Summary

Objective: To identify and assess healthy eating policies at national level which have been evaluated in terms of their impact on awareness of healthy eating, food consumption, health outcome or cost/benefit. Design: Review of policy documents and their evaluations when available. Setting: European Member States. Subjects: One hundred and twenty-one policy documents revised, 107 retained. Results: Of the 107 selected interventions, twenty-two had been evaluated for their impact on awareness or knowledge and twenty-seven for their impact on consumption. Furthermore sixteen interventions provided an evaluation of health impact, while three actions specifically measured any cost/benefit ratio. The indicators used in these evaluations were in most cases not comparable. Evaluation was more often found for public information campaigns, regulation of meals at schools/canteens and nutrition education programmes. Conclusions: The study highlights the need not only to develop harmonized and verifiable procedures but also indicators for measuring effectiveness and success and for comparing between interventions and countries. EU policies are recommended to provide a set of indicators that may be measured consistently and regularly in all countries. Furthermore, public information campaigns should be accompanied by other interventions, as evaluations may show an impact on awareness and intention, but rarely on consumption patterns and health outcome.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/24931
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Agriculture, Policy and Development > Department of Agri-Food Economics & Marketing
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
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