Unhealthy food at work ups risk of lifestyle ailments

The findings could contribute to a better understanding of the relationship of eating behaviours at work with overall diet. Besides, they could also help shape worksite wellness programmes that improve long-term health outcomes and reduce costs.“Workplace wellness programmes have the potential to promote lifestyle changes among a large population of employees, yet there have been challenges to developing effective programmes. We hope our findings will help in the development of accessible, scalable and affordable interventions,” said Jessica L McCurley from Harvard
University in the US.

The study involved over 600 employees of a large urban hospital in the US who regularly used the hospital’s cafeterias. Using cafeteria purchasing data, the research team developed a healthy purchasing score (HPS) to rate the dietary quality of employees’ overall purchases.

The researchers compared participants’ HPS with the quality of their overall diet as well as to measures of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

The analysis showed employees with the lowest HPS had the lowest overall dietary quality and the highest risk for obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, said study.

Healthier purchases were associated with higher dietary quality and lower prevalence of obesity, hypertension and pre-diabetes/diabetes, said the study.