Exploring the role of social support and social media for lifestyle interventions to prevent weight gain with young adults: Focus group findings

College students' attitudes about ways family, friends, significant others and media affect their eating and exercise behaviors and weight perceptions

Objective: This study examined college students' perceptions of how parents, family, friends, significant others, and the media influenced eating and exercise behaviors and weight perceptions. Participants: Forty-one college students, mostly female, participated in interviews. Methods: A Grounded Theory approach, using open coding and memoing, was used to uncover key themes. Results: Healthy cooking and exercise role models at home were viewed as positive, encouraging healthy eating and exercise. Criticism was perceived as negative for healthy habits and weight perceptions. Friends and significant others who practiced positive health habits and were body accepting were uplifting. Cultural transmission of the thin ideal could occur through the media. Some noted that media messages were becoming more positive. Conclusions: Using peers, especially friends, as collaborators in interventions, and discussing parental influences on eating, exercise, and weight perceptions may positively impact obesity prevention programs and interventions for college students.

A peer support dietary change intervention for encouraging adoption and maintenance of the Mediterranean diet in a non-Mediterranean population (TEAM-MED): lessons learned and suggested improvements

Peer support interventions for dietary change may offer cost-effective alternatives to interventions led by health professionals. This process evaluation of a trial to encourage the adoption and maintenance of a Mediterranean diet in a Northern European population at high CVD risk (TEAM-MED) aimed to investigate the feasibility of implementing a group-based peer support intervention for dietary change, positive elements of the intervention and aspects that could be improved. Data on training and support for the peer supporters; intervention fidelity and acceptability; acceptability of data collection processes for the trial and reasons for withdrawal from the trial were considered. Data were collected from observations, questionnaires and interviews, with both peer supporters and trial participants. Peer supporters were recruited and trained to result in successful implementation of the intervention; all intended sessions were run, with the majority of elements included. Peer supporters were complimentary of the training, and positive comments from participants centred around the peer supporters, the intervention materials and the supportive nature of the group sessions. Attendance at the group sessions, however, waned over the intervention, with suggested effects on intervention engagement, enthusiasm and group cohesion. Reduced attendance was reportedly a result of meeting (in)frequency and organisational concerns, but increased social activities and group-based activities may also increase engagement, group cohesion and attendance. The peer support intervention was successfully implemented and tested, but improvements can be suggested and may enhance the successful nature of these types of interventions. Some consideration of personal preferences may also improve outcomes.

Young Australian Adults Prefer Video Posts for Dissemination of Nutritional Information over the Social Media Platform Instagram: A Pilot Cross-Sectional Survey

Growing social media use in young adults may have applications in health promotion. This study aimed to determine the acceptability and feasibility of using Instagram to disseminate nutritional information to young Australians and assess the most preferred post style. A cross-sectional web-based pilot survey was conducted in 18−30-year-olds residing in New South Wales. Eight sets of mock Instagram posts were generated comprising three formats: (i) text/icon, (ii) realistic image, or (iii) video. Respondents (n = 108) were asked to review and rank posts from highest to lowest according to likelihood of engagement, visual preference, motivation to change eating behaviors, and relevancy of information. The Friedman test (Wilcoxon signed-rank test post hoc analysis with Bonferroni correction) was conducted to determine differences between the three post styles. Video style posts were more likely to be engaged with (p < 0.001), visually preferred (p < 0.001), more motivating to change eating behaviors (p < 0.001), and presented the most relevant food and nutrition knowledge (p < 0.001) compared with the other post styles. Most participants reported that Instagram was a suitable platform to share food and nutrition information (96%). The findings of this pilot study can be used to inform a large study that investigates the use of Instagram among a more diverse population and with a greater number of video posts tailored for audience segmentation.

A Hybrid Model for the Measurement of the Similarity between Twitter Profiles

Social media platforms have been an undeniable part of our lifestyle for the past decade. Analyzing the information that is being shared is a crucial step to understanding human behavior. Social media analysis aims to guarantee a better experience for the user and to increase user satisfaction. To draw any further conclusions, first, it is necessary to know how to compare users. In this paper, a hybrid model is proposed to measure the degree of similarity between Twitter profiles by calculating features related to the users’ behavioral habits. For this, first, the timeline of each profile was extracted using the official TwitterAPI. Then, three aspects of a profile were deliberated in parallel. Behavioral ratios are time-series-related information showing the consistency and habits of the user. Dynamic time warping was utilized to compare the behavioral ratios of two profiles. Next, the audience network was extracted for each user, and to estimate the similarity of two sets, the Jaccard similarity was used. Finally, for the content similarity measurement, the tweets were preprocessed using the feature extraction method; TF-IDF and DistilBERT were employed for feature extraction and then compared using the cosine similarity method. The results showed that TF-IDF had slightly better performance; it was therefore selected for use in the model. When measuring the similarity level of different profiles, a Random Forest classification model was used, which was trained on 19,900 users, revealing a 0.97 accuracy in detecting similar profiles from different ones. As a step further, this convoluted similarity measurement can find users with very short distances, which are indicative of duplicate users.

Social Network Lifestyle Interventions Reduce Non-Communicable Diseases Risk Factors in Financial Sector Employees: Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVE

To determine if scientifically based social network (Facebook) lifestyle interventions reduce 10-year cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.

METHODS

Financial sector employees (n = 300) were equally randomly assigned: Facebook plus Health Professionals (FB+HP), Facebook (FB), or control (C). We report changes in 10-year Framingham risk score (FRS) for CVD (%) and risk factors over 12 months.

RESULTS

FRS did not change within and between groups. Overweight (-7.4% vs -5.6%, P  = 0.005) and diabetes risk (-10.7% vs 0.2%, P  = 0.011) reduced significantly in FB+HP versus FB and C, respectively. Inadequate fruit/vegetable intake (-9.4% vs 3.6%, P  = 0.011) and smoking (-0.7% vs 14.9%) reduced significantly in FB versus C. No significant changes in physical activity, central obesity, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia between groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Scientifically based social network lifestyle intervention programs could be included in workplace health promotional programmes to improve certain non-communicable disease risk factors.

The association of social and food preparation location context with the quality of meals and snacks consumed by young adults: findings from the MYMeals wearable camera study

PURPOSE

This study examined the association of social contexts and food preparation location with the quality of meals and snacks (predominately from the five food groups (FFG) versus discretionary foods) in a sample of young Australian adults (18-30 years old) using wearable camera technology.

METHODS

A sub-sample from the cross-sectional MYMeals study wore a wearable camera that captured images every 30 s for three consecutive days. Eating episodes from 133 participants (55% female) were classified across 4 domains: food quality (observed proportion of FFG and discretionary items), preparation location, social interaction, and screen use. Socio-economic status (SES) was assigned using residential postcode and gender self-reported. Associations of contexts and demographic factors with food quality stratified by meal type were determined using mixed binary logistic regression models.

RESULTS

Of the 1840 eating episodes identified, 1775 were included in analysis (n = 8 preparation location and n = 57 food components that could not be identified were excluded). Food prepared at home was more likely to be from the FFG at lunch (OR = 4.8 95% CI 2.7-8.6), dinner (OR = 14.8 95% CI 7.6-28.6), and snacks (OR = 3.2 95% CI 2.2-4.8). Participants from higher SES areas were more likely to consume breakfasts (OR = 3.2 95% CI 1.4-7.4) and lunches (OR = 1.9 95% CI 1.0-3.7) predominately from the FFG. Females were more likely to consume lunches (OR = 2.0 95% CI 1.1-3.8) that was largely from the FFG. Social interaction and screen use were not associated with meal or snack quality.

CONCLUSION

Wearable cameras have verified the importance of addressing meals and snacks prepared outside of home as an important contributor of discretionary food.