Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption: Brief interventions have  useful long term results

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7404.1458-a

BMJ 2003;326:1458 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7404.1458-a

Letter

Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption

Brief interventions have useful long term results

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The study by Steptoe et al on dietary change remindedme of a coronary risk reduction project that I worked for duringthe late 1970s.¹ My role was to deliver behavioural weightreduction courses to people from a population of 6000 who wishedto attend. To my surprise, a single one hour counselling sessionfrom one of the doctors had the same long term benefit as myintensive 12 week behavioural weight loss course.

The key factor turned out to be not the treatment given butthe degree of interest of the people concerned. At 22 monthfollow up participants who had responded quickly to the initialinvitation had lost weight, whereas those who had respondedslowly to that initial invitation had gained weight. The treatmentgiven did not predict weight loss at all.

There was, however, a different pattern. Those people who respondedquickly and attended the . . . [Full text of this article]

David A Brown, psychologist

Airport Health Centre, Sydney, Mascot, NSW 2020, Australia davidbrown@bigpond.com

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Behavioural counselling to increase consumption of fruit and vegetables in low income adults: randomised trial: Andrew Steptoe, Linda Perkins-Porras, Catherine McKay, Elisabeth Rink, Sean Hilton, and Francesco P Cappuccio
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