Abstract
Background: Diet norms are the shared social behaviours and beliefs about diets. In many societies, including the
UK, these norms are typically linked to unhealthy diets and impede efforts to improve food choices. Social interactions
that could influence one another's food choices, were highly disrupted during the lockdowns in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic. A return to workplaces and re-establishment of eating networks may present an opportunity
to influence dietary norms by introducing minimum dietary standards to in workplaces, which could then spread
through wider home and workplace networks.
Methods: An agent-based model was constructed to simulate a society reflecting the structure of a city population
(1000 households) to explore changes in personal and social diet-related norms. The model tracked individual meal
choices as agents interact in home, work or school settings and recorded changes in diet quality (range 1 to 100). Scenarios
were run to compare individuals' diet quality with the introduction of minimum dietary standards with degrees
of working from home.
Results: The more people mixed at work the greater the impact of minimum standards on improving diet norms.
Socially isolated households remained unaffected by minimum standards, whereas household members exposed
directly, in workplaces or schools, or indirectly, influenced by others in the household, had a large and linear increase
in diet quality in relation to minimum standards (0.48 [95% CI 0.34, 0.62] per unit increase in minimum standards).
Since individuals regressed to the new population mean, a small proportion of diets decreased toward lower population
norms. The degree of return to work influenced the rate and magnitude of change cross the population (-2.4
points [-2.40, -2.34] in mean diet quality per 20% of workers isolating).
Conclusions: These model results illustrate the qualitative impact social connectivity could have on changing diets
through interventions. Norms can be changed more in a more connected population, and social interactions spread
norms between contexts and amplified the influence of, for example, workplace minimum standards beyond those
directly exposed. However, implementation of minimum standards in a single type of setting would not reach the whole population and in some cases may decrease diet quality. Any non-zero standard could yield improvements
beyond the immediate adult workforce and this could spill between social contexts, but would be contingent on
population connectivity.
Year
2022
Category
Refereed journal