Grant: Project Grant

A high proportion of Canadians do not meet dietary guidelines. This suggests that there is room for improvement in the way we intervene to promote healthy eating. Traditionally, interventions that are used to improve dietary habits are mainly focusing on health attributes of foods. Unfortunately, one downside to these approaches is that what is thought as "being good for your health" is often considered as being less tasty and less rewarding than "unhealthy" food. In that context, innovative approaches that consider the obvious importance of eating pleasure in everyday food choices and food-related contexts could be of great interest. However, no systematically developed evidence-based intervention is currently available to test the efficacy of such a strategy. Accordingly, the general objective of this project is to develop an intervention that integrates the different dimensions of pleasure to promote healthy eating. This intervention will be developed for both men and women, aged between 18-65 years, living with obesity. We want to make sure that the intervention is well aligned with evidence in the literature as well as with the needs of our population and perspectives of intervention providers. In order to do so, we will use strategies consistent with Intervention Mapping which is a flexible framework that is used for effective decision making at each step in the intervention development process. In conclusion, although it can seem as being a laborious and time-consuming process, a comprehensive and systematic approach is needed to develop effective interventions. Not doing so can dramatically reduce the efficacy of the intervention, leading to waste of time and money. The development of the first comprehensive intervention that integrates the different dimensions of pleasure to promote healthy eating in people living with obesity will be eventually followed by a randomized controlled trial conducted to evaluate the efficacy of our intervention.