NCT06072300: PACE-VEND

Effects of Physical Activity Calorie Equivalent Labelling on Hot Drink Vending Transactions

Status unknown Phase 3 Last updated 12 December 2023

What this trial tests

Phase 3 trial testing Physical activity calorie equivalent labelling in Averaged Kilocalories Per Beverage Transaction in 20,000 participants. Status unknown.

Timeline

30 October 2023

Primary endpoint
31 May 2024

31 May 2024

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Loughborough University
Phase	Phase 3
Status	Status unknown
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	crossover
Masking	none
Primary purpose	prevention
Enrollment	20,000
Start date	30 October 2023
Primary completion	31 May 2024
Estimated completion	31 May 2024
Sites	1 location across United Kingdom

Drugs / interventions tested

• Physical activity calorie equivalent labelling

Conditions studied

• Averaged Kilocalories Per Beverage Transaction — all drugs for Averaged Kilocalories Per Beverage Transaction →
• Proportion of Total High Calorie Beverages — all drugs for Proportion of Total High Calorie Beverages →
• Total Number of Beverage Transactions — all drugs for Total Number of Beverage Transactions →

Sponsor

Loughborough University

Who can join

18 and older, any sex, with Averaged Kilocalories Per Beverage Transaction or Proportion of Total High Calorie Beverages. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Food nutritional labels are one way to support people to make more informed, healthier food choices. However, there is limited evidence from trials showing that nutrition information on food or drinks is changing the food purchasing or food/beverage consumption behaviours. Many people do not understand the meaning of kilocalories (kcals, calories) or grams of fat displayed on food labels, and often underestimate the number of calories when labelling is not provided. An alternative or complementary approach to current nutrition labelling, is to provide calorie information with a clear interpretation of what the calorie content of the food item/meal or beverage means in terms of energy expenditure. This approach has been called physical activity calorie equivalent (or expenditure) labelling (PACE), which aims to show the public how many minutes (or miles/kilometres) of physical activity (e.g. walking or running) are equivalent to the calories contained in food/beverages. For example, "the calories in this chocolate bar require 95 minutes of walking to burn off". One context in which the public consume a lot of calories is from vending machines. We hypothesise that providing consumers with PACE information on hot beverage vending machines will reduce the average number of calories per transaction dispensed from the vending machines compared with when no PACE information/labelling is presented on vending machines. The study will adopt what is called a stepped wedge randomised controlled trial design involving 42 hot beverage vending machines in 27 buildings (clusters). Clusters will be randomly allocated to one of eight sequences across 24 weeks, which will dictate the time (weeks) at which clusters display the vending machine PACE labelling intervention. Weeks one to four will constitute a baseline period, during which the data will be collected from all vending machines without PACE labelling in place. This will be followed by 20 weeks during which the PACE labelling intervention will be introduced and maintained at each building according to a stepped wedge design (Figure 2). Specifically, every two weeks, three or four clusters will move to the intervention condition. The number of transactions from the vending machines will be collected over the study period and we will compare the number of transactions in the weeks when the PACE labelling is displayed compared to when it was not.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.