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Sustainable Healthy Food Group

The Diet, Data and Interventions group has built a unique data and model infrastructure to monitor the UK food system and evaluate interventions aimed at improving the healthiness and sustainability of diets.

We are interested in policy-level and community-level interventions, as well as changes in food retail environments. Our main focus is on population-level changes to the food environment. We are interested in all areas of the food system where consumers interact with food providers (e.g. retail outlets, fast food, restaurants, canteens, etc.) We evaluate interventions using experimental studies, natural experiments and scenario models.

Research Projects

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Our Team

About us

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publications

Hartmann-Boyce J, Theodoulou A, Oke JL, Butler AR, Scarborough P, Bastounis A, Dunigan A, Byadya R, Hobbs FDR, Sniehotta FF, Jebb SA, Aveyard P. Association between characteristics of behavioural weight loss programmes and weight change after programme end: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ, 2021;374:n1840.

 Bandy LK, Hollowell S, Harrington RA, Scarborough P, Jebb S, Rayner M. Assessing the healthiness of UK food companies’ product portfolios using food sales and nutrient composition data. PLoS One, 2021;16(8):e0254833.

 Piernas C, Cook B, Stevens R, Stewart C, Hollowell J, Scarborough P, Jebb S. Estimating the effect of moving meat-free products to the meat aisle on sales of meat and meat-free products: a non-randomised controlled intervention study in a large UK supermarket chain. PLoS Medicine, 2021;18(7):e1003715.

Cobiac LJ, Scarborough P. Modelling future trajectories of obesity and body mass index in England. PLoS One, 2021;16(6):e0252072.

Springmann M, Spajic L, Clark M, Poore J, Hertforth A, Webb P, Rayner M, Scarborough P. The healthiness and sustainability of national and global food-based dietary guidelines. BMJ, 2020;370:m2322

Impact of the announcement and implementation of the UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy on sugar content, price, product size and number of available soft drinks in the UK, 2015-19: a controlled interrupted time series analysis.
PLoS Medicine, 2020;17(2):e1003025.

Nutrient composition databases in the age of big data: foodDB, a comprehensive, real-time database infrastructure.
BMJ Open, 2019;9:e026652.

Reductions in sugar sales from soft drinks in the UK from 2015-2018.
BMC Medicine, 2020;18:20.

A systematic review, and meta-analysis, examining the prevalence of price promotions on foods and whether they are more likely to be found on less-healthy foods.
Public Health Nutrition, 2020;23(8):1281-1296.




News

Professor Peter Scarborough co-leads new £5.4 million national consortium to transform the food system and encourage healthier diets

Diet, Data and Interventions Health behaviours

SALIENT will co-design and evaluate interventions that support healthier diets and reduce the environmental impacts of our food system, working with partners in local government, food charities, community support teams and the food industry.

Close-up of a person's arm with a nicotine patch

Latest Cochrane Review finds high certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes are more effective than traditional nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) in helping people quit smoking

Diet, Data and Interventions Research methods & EBM

Research led by the University of Oxford, and funded by Cancer Research UK, has found the strongest evidence yet that e-cigarettes, also known as ‘vapes’, help people to quit smoking better than traditional nicotine replacement therapies, such as patches and chewing gums.

Study reveals environmental impact of 57,000 multi-ingredient processed foods for the first time

Diet, Data and Interventions

New project to investigate how food subsidies and taxes could help improve diets

Diet, Data and Interventions

Sugar levels in UK soft drinks lowered following government levy

Diet, Data and Interventions

Amount of sugar sold in soft drinks drops by 29% in the UK

Diet, Data and Interventions

Effect of adding calorie content to fast food menus

Diet, Data and Interventions

Achieving sugar reduction targets could cut child obesity and healthcare costs

Diet, Data and Interventions

Contact us

Big Data Institute | Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery
University of Oxford, Old Road Campus, Oxford OX3 7LF

Tel: +44(0)1865 617784

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JOB VACANCIES

For our current vacancies and those within the Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH), please visit the NDPH Work with us page.

POSTGRADUATE OPPORTUNITIES

We welcome applications from students who wish to study for a DPhil (PhD) in a research area allied to our interests. If you are interested in studying with us, we would like to hear from you. A list of current proposed DPhil projects can be found on the NDPH website.