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Volume 9
Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy
ISSN: 2165-7904
Page 14
March 18-19, 2019 | Rome, Italy
&
JOINT EVENT
3
rd
World Congress on
Diabetes and Obesity
12
th
International Conferences on
Childhood Obesity and Nutrition
Childhood Obesity 2019
Diabetes Conference 2019
March 18-19, 2019
Caroline Golden, J Obes Weight Loss Ther 2019, Volume 9
DOI: 10.4172/2165-7904-C1-089
Caroline Golden
Imperial College London, UK
Nudging obesity in the right direction
T
he global risk of obesity for children has risen from 0.7- 5.6% in girls and from 0.9-7.8% in boys from 1975-2016
(NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) 2017). We are proposing a novel method of tackling obesity in
young adults using Nudgeomics – a combination of DNA-based dietary guidelines and small nudges in food product
recommendations via an app. The app provides both educational information on personalized dietary guidelines, and the
nutritional information of the food product, with the advice on whether the food product is good for you based on your
DNA or whether another product would be better. The technique is based on Nudge Theory. A meta-analysis of Nudge
interventions showed that it improved dietary behaviour in children in 83% of studies. Moreover, dietary nudges were
found to be more effective in children in elementary school and adolescence rather than pre-school. Nudgeomics is not
only an effective tool to tackle obesity in adolescents; it also harnesses both the agency of the child and the authority of
the parent. NudgeShare enables parents to shop for their whole family by integrating the DNA-based guidelines of all
family members. The parent, in their position of authority over the diet of their children, is provided with reassurance
that they are buying foods that are nutritious. This is complimented by the personalized profile that adolescents have in
their own app. This will provide educational information on what is good for them, bad for them and why. Moreover, it
will help to explain the reasoning behind their parent’s food choices, for example why they chose the green product over
the red. It also provides the gaming opportunity for children to try to get more greens than reds each week, which in turn
could make them a more active participant in grocery shopping. This easy and fun entry to food education could have a
profound effect on informing shopping habits from a young age that may be carried into adulthood.
Recent Publications
1.
Chen C H et al. (2018) PERSON-Personalized expert recommendation system for optimized nutrition. IEEE
Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems 12(1):151–160.
2.
Cork S C et al. (2018) Extracellular pH monitoring for use in closed-loop vagus nerve stimulation. Journal of
Neural Engineering 15(1):016001.
3.
Mirza K B et al. (2018) Influence of Cholecystokinin-8 on Compound nerve action potentials from ventral
gastric vagus in rats. International Journal of Neural Systems 7(27):1850006.
4.
Mirza K B et al. (2017) Live demo: platform for closed loop neuromodulation based on dual mode biosignals.
IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS) IEEE 1–1.
5.
Toumazou C et al. (2013) Simultaneous DNA amplification and detection using a pH-sensing semiconductor
system. Nature Methods 10(7):641–646.