The VegEze app developed by CSIRO and SP Health has helped participants increase their vegetable consumption and variety of vegetable intake in the space of three weeks.

The app was funded by Hort Innovation and developed as part of a research project investigating the impact of digital health interventions, and set participants a challenge to eat at least three types of vegetables at dinner (or their preferred main meal of the day) for 21 days.

The study found that using VegEze resulted in an average increase in vegetable intake of 0.5 serves a day over the 21-day challenge period – more than three extra serves per week.

The users who started from the lowest baseline grew their daily intake by even more, with more than 490 users increasing their intake by up to 1.2 serves a day at the three-week mark of the challenge. Other specific groups within the participant pool that made significant gains in vegetable consumption were overweight and obese women.

Significantly, across the total sample size of 1,224 people who completed the 21-day challenge, the overall increase in vegetable intake was 34 per cent.

Previous modelling by Deloitte, commissioned by Hort Innovation, has suggested that just a 10 per cent increase in vegetable consumption could boost annual grower profits by $23 million.

The VegEze app provided participants with features to help them put target behaviour into practice, including creating a log of which vegetables they ate, providing recipes and meal ideas, and giving them feedback and awards when completing the challenge.

As well as the findings around vegetable consumption and the impact of the app, the project also generated quantitative data around vegetable preferences, like the types and quantities of vegetables eaten at breakfast, lunch, dinner and as snacks.

For full details on the research project and its findings about the impact of using mobile apps to increase vegetable consumption, take a look at the final report on the InfoVeg database.

Back in March, we interviewed CSIRO’s Dr Gilly Hendrie for our InfoVeg Radio podcast on the VegEze project. If you’re interested in the how the project was undertaken, take a listen!

This post appeared in the AUSVEG Weekly Update published 21 August 2018. Subscribe to the Update using our online form to receive the latest industry news in your inbox every week!