NCT05539222

Food Vouchers and Educational Intervention on Promoting Healthy Eating in Vulnerable Groups.

The Effect of Food Vouchers and an Educational Intervention on Promoting Healthy Eating in Vulnerable Groups. A Pilot Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 66 (actual)
• Sponsor: Universidad de Zaragoza · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 3 Years – 80 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Cost has been reported as the main barrier to healthy eating in vulnerable groups. We aimed to evaluate the effect of food vouchers with a nutrition education intervention on diet quality (using NOVA classification) and health. This pilot study has a randomized pre-and post-test experimental design. We included 66 vulnerable users from the Red Cross of Zaragoza (Spain). Intervention and control group individuals received 120 eu-ros/month during 3 months in food vouchers to be spent in supermarkets (60 eu-ros/month if under 12y) plus a 10-week nutrition education for the intervention group. Family food purchases were assessed using electronically recorded supermarket-obtained transactions. We found the percentage of healthy food was higher in the in-tervention group than in the control group. Once the nutrition education was over, dif-ferences between groups dissipated. Health parameters improved in the intervention group, particularly weight-status, lipid, and liver enzymes. Control participants gained weight, although lipid and liver enzymes improved. Blood pressure and HbA1c did not improve in either the intervention or the control group. In conclusion, providing unrestricted food vouchers to vulnerable groups to increase healthy food consumption and reduce the intake of ultra-processed food appears to be insufficient and should be accompanied by medium-long term education.

Conditions

• Economic Problems

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Food vouchers and education	Intervention and control group individuals received 120 euros/month during 3 months in food vouchers to be spent in supermarkets (60 euros/month if under 12y) plus a 10-week nutrition education for the intervention group. Family food purchases were assessed using electronically recorded supermarket-obtained transactions.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-10-14
• Primary completion: 2022-03-30
• Completion: 2022-06-30
• First posted: 2022-09-14
• Last updated: 2022-09-14

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Spain