Edutainment matters: Can short video apps improve household food consumption in rural China?

To ensure nutritional intake and reduce the occurrence of diet-related diseases, there is a need to promote a healthy diet. At present, short video apps with information dissemination, social interaction, and online shopping are widely used, which have changed the way people obtain and exchange information, and the way of life and consumption.

A team of researchers from China explored whether short video app use can affect food consumption choices based on the first-hand micro-survey data of 2,000 rural households across 100 villages in five Chinese provinces in 2023. Their findings are published in the Journal of Integrative Agriculture.

"We found that short video app use can increase households' per capita food consumption and dietary diversity, mainly by raising consumption of aquatic products, fruits, poultry, pork and soybeans, but it does not improve households' food health index," shares co-corresponding author Assoc. Prof. Mingxing Sun from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Notably, its positive effect on dietary diversity is stronger among high-income groups. It also improves dietary diversity in villages that have express delivery points but lack food markets and are remotely located.

The researchers noted that they were unable to identify the impact of specific content types in short video applications, such as health education videos and food promotion videos, on food consumption choices due to data limitations.

"Going forward, we hope to further clarify the impact of specific types of short videos on food consumption through data supplementation," adds Sun.

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Contact the author: Shaoyue Ma, E-mail: masy.20b@igsnrr.ac.cn; #Correspondence Mingxing Sun, E-mail: sunmx@igsnrr.ac.cn

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