Implementation and Evaluation of a European Healthy Weight Campaign "We Love Eating"

Implementation and Evaluation of a European Healthy Weight Campaign "We Love Eating"

The project targeted children, pregnant women and older people who are in key life stages where good nutrition is particularly important.

We Love Eating encouraged conscious eating and focusing on the pleasure food brings through tools such as games, recipes, leaflets, posters and its website. It also promoted more physical activity in daily life, offering realistic ways to adopt a healthier and more active lifestyle.

Conclusions on the project's impact on participant's lifestyle choices will now support policy-making as well as further sharing and implementing of best practices in health and nutrition. Find the detailed post evaluation in section "Monitoring and evaluation".

The contractor has also summarised the lessons learnt from its approach to encourage the target groups to improve their diets and engage in regular physical activity, to share their experience with everybody wishing to carry out similar initiatives.

Monitoring and evaluation: 2,158 children, their parents, older people and pregnant women in the 7 European cities described their awareness of the benefits of a healthy diet, and intentions towards physical activity at the end of the project. More than half of them knew the 'We Love Eating' project was an initiative of the European Union. The project's leaflet turned out to be the most successful tool attracting all target groups.

Almost 600 had already participated in earlier surveys, making it possible to verify if and how the intervention actually changed their behaviour. The awareness of aspects of a healthy lifestyle increased in almost all target groups. Positive trends can be observed, most evident in older people. Seniors have the best intentions towards all aspects of healthy living.

Outcomes of the project

More seniors are now eating fruit and vegetables daily or drink water more than 3 times a day.
Older people believe that drinking water will have a positive effect on their health.
Parents are more aware that their children enjoy eating healthily.
Fewer young children eat vegetables less than twice a week or drink water less than once a day.
Fewer youngsters, 10-15 y., eat fruit less than twice a week. They intend to share more meals with their family or friends.
Pregnant women are more aware that it is good for their unborn child if they enjoy eating balanced, home-cooked meals with fruit and vegetables, and are physically active.
"We Love Eating" triggered 3 out of 4 pregnant women to think about their lifestyle, though their actual behaviour still remained largely unaffected. On this point, it could be noted that intentions are largely determined by perceptions. This means that some respondents may (erroneously) consider their lifestyle to already be healthy, therefore seeing no special need for increased efforts to change it.