Self-optimising Decision Support Tool for Healthy Eating in Kids

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Diets of young children in the UK and other countries are not ideal, in particular because theycontain not enough fruit and vegetables. Food habits developed in early childhood persist inadulthood, thus playing a long lasting role on our eating behaviours. 30% of children between2 and 15 are overweight or obese (DoH) with a higher risk of getting type 2 diabetes, heartdisease and certain cancers. In the UK, nearly 3 million children are overweight and 1.5million of these are actually obese. In 2009, there were 3,860 children admitted to hospital forobesity-related conditions, compared with 872 in 2000 (4-fold rise). Health problemsassociated with being overweight or obese cost the NHS more than £5 billion every year (5-6% of total NHS budget). To address this challenge, Food Dudes (FD) have developed theFull Force Programme, an Obesity Prevention/Healthy Eating programme based on state ofthe art health sciences, cognitive neuroscience, nutritional science and behaviouralpsychology. Food Dudes Programme has already been successfully taken up by all primaryschools in Ireland (more than half million children) and in the UK by more than 150,000children. Following this, Food Dudes have identified an opportunity to develop a selfoptimisingdecision support tool to enable the programme to provide tailored advice that selfoptimiseas more data is collected from the evidence base.