Reducing excessive consumption of food and soft drinks is core to tackling the high rates of overweight and obesity in the UK and elsewhere. It is estimated that about one third of our daily energy intake is consumed while at work, with most of the food consumed not brought from home. There is currently limited evidence of the impact of interventions within workplaces to improve employees’ diets, with most interventions to date based on informing and educating workers about their diets, commonly regarded as insufficient to tackle obesity.

Sub-diving a fixed amount of a sugar-sweetened beverage in smaller vs larger bottles could help curb their consumption but so far, no studies have tested this possibility.

In our study, published in the journal BMC Public Health, we assessed the feasibility of running a trial on the impact of bottle size on in-home consumption of cola, in which households would receive a set amount of cola each week for four weeks, in bottles of one of four sizes (1500 ml, 1000 ml, 500 ml, or 250 ml).