Abstract
Unhealthy food choice is an important driver of obesity, but research examining the relationship of food choices and social influence has been limited. We sought to assess associations in the healthfulness of workplace food choices among a large population of diverse employees whose food-related social connections were identified using passively collected data in a validated model. Data were drawn from 3 million encounters where pairs of employees made purchases together in 2015–2016. The healthfulness of food items was defined by ‘traffic light’ labels. Cross-sectional simultaneously autoregressive models revealed that proportions of both healthy and unhealthy items purchased were positively associated between connected employees. Longitudinal generalized estimating equation models also found positive associations between an employee’s current food purchase and the most recent previous food purchase a coworker made together with the employee. These data indicate that workplace interventions to promote healthy eating and reduce obesity should test peer-based strategies.
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Data availability
Although the data are deidentified, combined demographic data could potentially identify individuals or small groups. As a result, interested parties may access the data by applying to the corresponding author and entering into an appropriate data use agreement.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by a National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) R21-DK109548 grant to D.E.L. and a National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) R01-HL125486 grant to A.N.T. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the paper.
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D.E.L., M.C.P., A.J.O. and A.N.T. designed the research. D.E.L., M.C.P. and A.Y. performed the research. D.E.L., M.C.P. and B.P. analysed data. D.E.L., M.C.P., A.J.O. and A.N.T. wrote the paper.
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The cafeterias providing data for this project are owned by the MGH, which employs D.E.L., B.P. and A.N.T. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.
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Levy, D.E., Pachucki, M.C., O’Malley, A.J. et al. Social connections and the healthfulness of food choices in an employee population. Nat Hum Behav 5, 1349–1357 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01103-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01103-x
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