Can Information Enhanced with Nudges Mitigate the Rise of Childhood Obesity in the Global South?

Abstract

We conducted a RCT to test whether updating nutrition information sets of parents along with nudges reduces excess body fat among primary schoolchildren in urban Vietnam. Parents of overweight or obese children were randomly offered a nutrition consultation that led to goal setting with soft commitment, BMI-forage report card, and weight scale. After 6 months, the intervention reduced body fat, waist circumference, and the likelihood of being overweight or obese, which are partly explained by improvements in diets and diet-related parental perceptions. Anthropometric improvements are concentrated among girls-partly operating through achievement of dietary goals-and persisted after 22 months. JEL Codes: I12, I15, I18 This open access article is distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) and is freely available online at: http://jhr.uwpress.org "It is crucial that lower income countries facing rapid dietary change learn from the lessons of higher income countries and try to direct the nutrition transitions in more healthy directions."-Barry Popkin (1994, p.285)