Are You What You Eat?: Improving Food Literacy in School-Age Children

Current school nutrition classes for middle school students do not improve food literacy (FL) or affect long-term dietary behaviors. This deficient education is contributing to the nationwide childhood obesity epidemic, with 20% of children considered overweight or obese. An evidence-based quality improvement project aims to implement an experiential nutrition curriculum, Choose Health: Food, Fun, and Fitness (CHFFF), with didactics, activities, culinary skills, school gardens, and farm field trips. CHFFF has significant potential to increase FL levels and positively influence food choices, reducing childhood obesity rates and improving overall health outcomes. Because it is based on social learning and environmental influences, the Social Cognitive Theory was used to guide the project. The course was taught for 90 minutes once a week for nine weeks to a class of 20 6th-grade students at a low-income middle school in southern Arizona. IRB exempt status was obtained. The 15 question, Likert-scale EFNEP Youth Questionnaire was administered to the students, collecting data about dietary behaviors before and after the intervention. Descriptive statistics, paired t-test, and Wilcoxon signed rank test will be used for data analysis. Results indicated a statistically significant change in food safety (p=.029) but not dietary behaviors (p=.980) following the intervention. Research supports using an experiential nutrition curriculum; however, the intervention had major limitations. Further research to develop standardized nutrition education and data collection tools focusing on FL is warranted.