Weight Loss

Health and Wellness - Obesity Campaigns

According to a report in the health journal Obesity, scientists examining the efficiency of public health campaigns against obesity have discovered that such programs may result in the opposite of the intended effect.

The research shows that public service announcements designed to encourage over-eaters to abstain from sweet and fatty foods and get more exercise may actually inspire people to indulge even more.

In a study conducted at the University of Illinois, scientists asked 53 college students to evaluate a series of motivational posters designed to promote exercise. After rating the posters, the students were then given a container of raisins and asked to judge the quality of the raisins, being told that they could eat as many as they needed to make a proper evaluation.

Researchers then conducted the experiment again, this time substituting the exercise endorsements for another set of posters promoting things like team-work and activist groups. As with the first group, the subjects were then asked to rate raisins and told to eat as many as needed.

The researchers observed that those students who had analyzed the posters promoting exercise consumed significantly more raisins before making their evaluations than those in the control group.

Delores Alberracin, a professor of psychiatry and lead author of the study, believes that the posters encouraging exercise may have simply inspired the subjects to do something – though not necessarily exercise. As food was then made available, eating then became something to do.

The significance of this study for public health projects, Albarracin suggests, is that we need to be more cautious about when and where we try to motivate people to work out. For example, she said, commercials intended to encourage people to activity may not be effective when people are sitting in front of a television with a pantry full of snacks in the kitchen.

Dr. Louis Aronne, clinical professor of medicine and director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, says that the study highlights the controversial possibility that public health campaigns may cause more harm than good if not targeted correctly.

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