Veggie FriendsRachel Fuchs, Janae Richey, Jose Rosales Chavez,

Nadaa Taiyab, Kristen Whitaker

The ProblemHow do we get people to eat more vegetables?• Facebook page?

• Meetup group?

• Text messaging?

• Coaching?

• Cooking Classes?

The Solution Veggie Friends Facebook Group• Easy to recruit, manage, collaborate

• Targets specific eating behavior (innovation)

Goals:• Inspire

• Build confidence & skills

• Make it fun

Theories of Change

Social Contagion (David Hamilton, PhD)

More likely to eat veggies if your Facebook friends do!

Behavior Modeling Group leaders post recipes initially

Self-Efficacy Build confidence as try recipes and post their own

Cues to Action Posting and comments frequently appear

Improved Associations

Fun atmosphere would improve association with veggies

The Brainstorm1st: Health Foodies? self-talk?

health coach? farmers market tours?

2nd: Where is our real passion? Getting people to eat more veggies!

Trying to make it work

1st attemptCatchy

Facebook copy with a link --

3 responses

2nd attempt:Facebook Post & Sending out a Facebook Message -- 52 responses

The Group and Week 1

The Facebook Group

Week 1: Each team member posted a recipe (1 group member a day)

Week 2Each group member posted a recipe

&Facebook Event: Potluck

Week 3Team members

did not post recipes once daily

Veggie Competition (we notified participants on Facebook twice)

Survey Process

Sent email and put out a facebook post once a week to remind participants to fill out survey (measuring vegetable intake)

Demographics28 years old in average (range 21-55)

Ethnicity

● 71% White

● 2% Black

● 5% Asian

● 17% Hispanic

Education

• 3% HS or GED

• 26% Some college or AA

• 41% Bachelors

• 29% Graduate or Professional degree

Marital Status

• 67% Single

• 22% Married

• 10% Living with Partner

Do you have children under the age of 18 years old?

• Yes: 27%

Facebook Participation Data• 15% (9 people) posted a

recipe that they made

Likes Comments Posts

Week 1 57 37 7

Week 2 25 17 6

Week 3 6 5 2

Vegetable Consumption Data

Cups / day

Varieties / day

Baseline 1.33 2.14

Week 1 2.02 3.17

Week 2 1.81 2.62

Week 3 2.71 4.25

Cooking Confidence

Trying New Recipes

Thoughts about Vegetables

POSITIVEhealthy, yummy, nutritious, delicious

NEUTRALfood, green, veggie tales, salad, green giant

NEGATIVEgross, weird flavors, hate waiting for them to ripen, hate that they need preparing, cutting peeling, Not my favorite but I’ll eat them, hard to prepare, bland, tasteless

Potluck and Thanksgiving • Potluck: only 1 person posted (not even a

recipe)• Thanksgiving: only 1 person posted a recipe• So, the events where we tried to have people

contribute to the facebook group, did not pan out

Data Limitations

ConclusionWhat we learned and challenges/risks and how to

overcome• Should have done research prior to starting• Initially people were really excited, but participation decreased over time• We asked friends to join the group - bias• It is hard to get other people to actively participate in posting their own

recipes• Constantly the same people posting and liking (but that doesn’t mean that

people aren’t increasing their vegetable intake or improving their confidence that didn’t contribute to the group)

• Maybe some people weren’t interested in posting and interacting, or had nothing to contribute

ConclusionFuture Plans• A lot of work on our own part, very hard to make a business out of it (no

business model of having a FB group, more for fun)• Research Purpose:

o No specific previous studies on FB and vegetable intakeo Previous Facebook and text messaging study conducted with results

showing positive impact on weight-loss • It was fun, maybe we would continue it with just our friends