Making Workplace Cafeterias Healthier

Supervisors: Dr Julia Allan (Institute of Applied Health Sciences), Professor Marijn de Bruin (Institute of Applied Health Sciences) and Professor Alexandra Johnstone (Rowett Institute of Nutrition & Health)

Full time employees spend one third of their waking hours at work and often eat in workplace cafeterias (Smedslund, 2004). If employees can be prompted to choose healthier foods at work, there is potential to improve workforce health. Simple changes to how foods are presented, displayed, priced or promoted can prompt employees to make healthier choices (Allan et al, 2016). However, the evidence in this area is not currently available in a format that organisations and employers can easily use.

The present PhD would:

(a) Review the existing evidence on environmental determinants of food choice (eg portion size, placement, signage, labelling, visibility, etc) to identify strategies which could usefully be applied in the workplace;

(b) Develop a checklist (based on the evidence identified in (a)) which can be used to evaluate whether workplace cafeterias are health promoting or not (and if not, how they could be improved); and

(c) Screen workplace cafeterias using this checklist to establish whether scores relate to key workplace health outcomes (such as weight, sickness absence, etc).

The successful candidate would be based in the internationally recognised Aberdeen Health Psychology Group and work closely with the Rowett Institute for Nutrition & Health, a global leader in nutrition research.

Application:

Please select ’Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Health Sciences’ from the list of programme options in the University of Aberdeen’s online postgraduate applicant portal to ensure that your application is passed to the correct school for processing. Then manually enter the name of the supervisor(s), project title and funder (Elphinstone) in the space provided.