More healthy 'nudges'

The UK charity Teens and Toddlers aims to reduce teenage pregnancies through a programme in which teenagers spend 20 weeks mentoring a toddler. The idea is that the experience brings home the magnitude of the responsibility of bringing up a child.

The Welsh Assembly Government and the charity Drinkaware are developing a year-long ad campaign to communicate accurate information about student drinking norms to students. Past research has shown that students consistently overestimate how much their peers drink.

Research by Collin Payne at the New Mexico State University College of Business found that shoppers bought more fruit and vegetables when trolleys were designed with a dedicated compartment labelled as being for fruit and veg.

The Behavioural Insight Team and Department of Health have formed a partnership with LazyTown, an Icelandic TV show with a healthy superhero character, Sportacus, who motivates children to eat healthily and be more active. When a supermarket chain in Iceland branded their fruit and veg as 'Sports Candy', the name used in LazyTown, sales went up by 22 per cent.

Blood monitoring can be challenging for children with diabetes and their parents. A collaboration between Bayer Healthcare and Nintendo has led to a Didget device in which children earn game points for consenting to pin-prick blood-sugar tests.

A new food hygiene rating scheme aims to make information on restaurant hygiene as salient and accessible as possible, for example by encouraging hygiene-based restaurant league tables and the voluntary use of rating stickers on entrances and windows.