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 reminded me of a coronary risk reduction project that I worked for during the late 1970s.¹ My role was to deliver behavioural weight reduction courses to people from a population of 6000 who wished to attend. To my surprise, a single one hour counselling session from one of the doctors had the same long term benefit as my intensive 12 week behavioural weight loss course.

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

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

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

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Related Article

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
BMJ 2003 326: 855. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]