Mexico has one of the largest overweight and obesity epidemics in the world and as a response, several actions aiming to reduce the obesity epidemic have been already set in place. Some of these actions include a specific action program for schools looking to turn the scholar environments into supportive environments for the infants to make healthier food choices. The influence of the environment (the so-called “choice architecture”) on people’s perceptions and decisions is studied by economists with the aim of supporting individuals’ to make healthier decisions, using tools known as “nudges”. However, "nudges" are not commonly integrated into anti-obesity strategies. We designed an intervention trying to find out whether such a small, liberty-preserving intervention could increase the effectiveness of a water-promotion campaign, when compared to the common approach of an educative talk. The intervention was developed in three schools in Mexico City and the State of Mexico. The body mass index, standardized by Z-scores, was used as the indicator of campaign success. Although – mainly due to problems within the sample and a yet too-short follow-up – our results do not show considerable differences between the approaches, they provide insights suggesting that including “nudges” into a health promoting campaign may indeed have a positive impact.

13.1, 13.1

9.3.3, 9.3.3