The Sugar-Intensive Intervention touched on exercise, sleep, and other aspects of healthy diet, but focused primarily on added sugar reduction. Beyond defining added sugar, the sugar-intensive intervention also included: information on how sugar is metabolized; description of health risks associated with excessive added sugar; opportunities to rehearse women's and men's recommended daily maxima; a game guessing the sugar content of various foods and beverages; information on proportion of undergraduates at their university who report being motivated to reduce their sugar intake; training in finding added-sugar information in nutritional labels; and concrete suggestions for replacing high-sugar foods and beverages with healthy options, and managing tempting situations.

The General Health Intervention presentation covered Healthy People 2030 goals regarding physical activity (aerobic exercise, strength training), healthy eating (fruit, vegetable, and whole grain consumption; decreasing consumption of saturated fats and added sugar), and sleep (minimum of 7 hours per night), as well as healthy stress management/emotion regulation. The health benefits/risks associated with each goal were described, along with suggested strategies for achieving each goal. This version of the intervention also included a definition of added sugar and information about the recommended daily added-sugar maxima for women and men, but served mainly as an active control condition for testing the effects of the target intervention of interest.

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Change from baseline in consumption of specific high-sugar foods and beverages each day during the week preceding assessment. Using a matrix with days as columns and food/beverage items as rows, participants reported number of servings consumed of each food per day of that week: regular soda/pop/sweet iced tea (12oz), energy drinks (1 can), fully sweetened sports drinks (12oz), sugar-syrup coffee drinks (small = 8-12 oz = 1 serving; med = 1.5 servings; large = 2 servings), mixed drinks/cocktails (1 drink), donut/sweet pastry/danish (1 whole), muffin/cake-type bread slice (1 whole), fresh flavored yogurt (½ cup), cookie/brownie (3 oz), cupcake/slice of cake (1 whole), slice of pie (1 whole), ice cream/frozen yogurt (½ cup), and candy (¼ cup). Servings were multiplied by grams added sugar/serving for each item based on the National Cancer Institute Dietary Health Questionnaire-III, and summed across items to obtain total weekly added sugar.

"How motivated are you to reduce your added-sugar consumption?" Response options were 1 = Not at all motivated, 2 = A little motivated, 3 = Somewhat motivated, and 4 = Very motivated.