In 2016, a multi-industry project focusing on Australian fruit and vegetable consumption was completed by researchers at CSIRO. The VegEze app was produced as a result, and it helped to boost consumption figures of the app users who participated in a 21-day challenge. Vegetables Australia spoke to Dr Gilly Hendrie about the research.

It is well-publicised that Australians are not eating enough fruit and vegetables, with over half of Australian adults not currently eating enough fruit – and over 90 per cent not eating enough vegetables – to meet Australia’s dietary guidelines.

A project that concluded in 2016 surveyed over 250,000 Australians to deliver insights into their fruit, vegetable and juice consumption through the CSIRO Healthy Diet Score.

‘Self-reported’ answers were then analysed, and they were based on the following topics:

• The proportion of respondents who met the fruit and vegetable consumption guidelines.
• • How much variety they consumed.
• How various segments of the population differed.
• The importance of fruit and vegetable intake on overall Diet Score.

CSIRO partnered with digital health company SP Health to deliver Consumption of juiced fruit and vegetables data analytics (MT16008), which was a strategic levy investment under the Hort Innovation Apple and Pear, Citrus and Vegetable Funds.

Consumption focus

Project Lead and CSIRO Research Scientist Dr Gilly Hendrie said the data that was collected from this project supported the national nutrition survey results that indicated Australians are not eating enough fruit and vegetables.

“People feel like they eat more fruit and vegetables than they do, but when they actually report their intake patterns relative to guidelines (what’s expected of us), they’re falling quite short of what is recommended for good health and wellbeing,” Dr Hendrie said.

“While certain groups do better than others, men, younger adults, obese adults or unemployed adults have particularly low fruit and vegetable intake.”

One major finding was just how important variety is in driving overall consumption.

“People who had more different types of vegetables also had higher amounts of vegetables consumed,” Dr Hendrie said.

“This study also further validated the idea that vegetables are a marker of a healthy diet more generally, so people who consumed a greater variety and more amounts of vegetables also reported higher diet quality and greater compliance with the dietary guidelines overall.”

Variety the key

When looking at variety of vegetables, researchers recommended that we should always eat three types of vegetables with dinner.

“We thought that was a really practical and simple message to put into a behaviour change app, so we developed this 21-day challenge around that ‘threeveg-at-dinner’ idea, as a way to increase overall vegetable consumption,” Dr Hendrie said.

The VegEze app (Boosting vegetable consumption through diet (VegEze) – VG16071) was developed upon completion of MT16008, and its impact on vegetable consumption was measured through an intervention study whereby participants logged in and tracked their daily vegetable consumption through the app.

Five thousand people participated in the baseline survey, with 1,000 following up and producing some promising results. At the end of the challenge, the study found that, on average, people who used the app had increased their vegetable consumption by 0.5 serves a day, and their vegetable variety had also increased by 0.4 types per day.

“The app was embedded with a strong, scientific evidence-base and established behaviour change techniques that we know help people to change their behaviour,” Dr Hendrie said.

However, it remains to be seen if there has been ongoing increased vegetable consumption and consequently, increase in vegetable sales.

“In Australia, the vegetable consumption patterns have remained consistently low for a long time. It’s really hard to shift unfortunately, despite some positive trends including Kalettes, which had a big boom (they were used in Masterchef) or the popularity of little snacking cucumbers or different coloured tomatoes. I have a feeling having greater variety and more novel products must improve sales, but I haven’t seen any data on that yet,” Dr Hendrie said.

“We should be looking at variety and diversification in the types, colours and the sizes of all these vegetables that make them taste better, more convenient, but don’t impact on price. We know people choose food based on their convenience, taste, cost and health, and lately, sustainability.”

“If we can give people lots of different options, remove any potential barriers that might stop them from consuming vegetables (e.g. preparation required or their size or bitterness), then we would hope that it would drive consumption.”

Further activities

Currently, CSIRO is focusing on increasing consumption among children through the five-year project Tools and interventions for increasing children’s vegetable knowledge: VegKIT (VG16064).

“This project covers different settings, working with schools, childcare and food suppliers to determine best-practice, and then to develop and test interventions to try to increase consumption in Australian children,” Dr Hendrie said.

She added that CSIRO is always looking for new ways to improve intake of vegetables and other healthy foods.

“One way to do that is to reduce consumption of unhealthy foods because that makes space on our plates for healthy foods.

“We’re doing a few exploratory-type projects, looking at what strategies might reduce unhealthy or discretionary food intake, and the messages around reducing or switching an unhealthy food item to a healthier option.”

Industry input

Vegetable growers and industry members are encouraged to get involved and contribute to research projects such as VegKIT as these are becoming more ‘co-designed’. In doing so, they can share their opinions, and researchers gain insights into areas that they may have little knowledge of, such as product value.

“With the VegKIT project, we have a grower on our Project Reference Group, and we have people from Hort Innovation or from the broader vegetable industry contributing to guide the research that we do,” Dr Hendrie said.

“To get their perspective adds tremendous value to this research.”

Find out more

The final report for this project is available on the InfoVeg database.