GEMs Collections
Engaging Preschoolers in Food Tasting and Movement Activities Using Mobile Applications
The ubiquity of mobile devices and their use in daily life create new paths for health promotion interventions, such as promoting healthy behaviors among families.1,2 The preschool years are an important stage of development when children begin displaying independence while still requiring guidance to help them develop healthy eating and physical activity (PA) behaviors.3,4 At the same time, preschoolers are engaging with screens, with 98% of young children having access to digital devices and 42% owning a tablet.The Immersive Virtual Alimentation and Nutrition Application: An Interactive Digital Dietitian
Current methods for providing nutrition education on portion size and calorie density rely on didactic tactics such as pamphlets, handouts, and slide show presentations in appointments with registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs). Recent advances in technology, including the development of and increased accessibility to immersive virtual reality (iVR) devices, have been proposed as a novel and impactful method of providing nutrition education.1–4 Immersive virtual reality is becoming increasingly commonplace, with headsets commercially available and as cost-effective as a few hundred dollars, or less than the price of other popular gaming systems.Flint Families Cook: A Virtual Cooking and Nutrition Program for Families
Amid parental concerns regarding poor nutrition and lack of cooking skills among youth in Flint, Michigan,1 a team of local dietitians, chefs, and researchers created Flint Kids Cook (FKC). The program was grounded in Social Cognitive Theory,2 focusing on improving youth knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy for cooking fresh, healthy foods. A trained chef and registered dietitian co-facilitated interactive lessons designed to increase knowledge and develop skills to prepare healthy meals and snacks at home.Three Lesson Series Improves Student Confidence in Ability to Apply Evidence-Based Practice in Dietetics
The Code of Ethics for the Nutrition and Dietetics Profession states that science-based decisions, derived from the best available evidence, are the underpinnings of ethical practice.1 Nutrition and dietetics practitioners must engage in evidence-based practice to meet professional standards and protect individual clients, the community, and the profession.1 Although the number of evidence-based nutrition guidelines continues to grow, end-user adoption of these guidelines remains a barrier to achieving consistent, evidence-based practice within the profession.Development of a Tribally-led Gardening Curriculum for Indigenous Preschool Children: The FRESH Study
Early childhood is a sensitive period for healthy weight development and is an important determinant of obesity risk across the life course.1,2 Thus, early childhood is a critical window for obesity prevention,3 with particular opportunity for reducing Indigenous American Indian (AI) disparities.4 By the age of 2 years, the average AI child will weigh more than their White peer, and this excess weight usually persists into kindergarten.3 Disparities are particularly pervasive within rural AI communities.Evaluation of a Nutrition Education and Culinary Program for Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder
Older adolescents (aged 15–19 years) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be at a high risk of developing poor dietary habits as they begin to transition out of a structured high school environment.1,2 Youth with ASD are at a greater risk of obesity than neurotypical youth, which may be partly the result of poor dietary behaviors, namely food selectivity.3 Studies have estimated that 46% to 89% of youth with ASD have some form of food selectivity, which is linked with an increased risk of obesity as adolescents enter adulthood.The SPORKS For Kids: Integrating Movement Into Nutrition Education
Eating behaviors acquired early in life can persist across the lifespan; thus, the preschool years are an important period for the development of healthy eating habits. Willingness to try new or novel foods is an antecedent to a healthful diet, and repeated taste exposure and sensory exploration has consistently yielded the best outcomes for increasing willingness to try and consumption of target foods in young children.1-4 Repeated taste exposures to new foods in a fun, positive environment can increase children's willingness to try new food.Start Strong: A Culinary Nutrition Education Training for Family Child Care Providers
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention developed the Spectrum of Opportunities Framework to help communities target obesity prevention in early care and education (ECE) settings.1 Professional development is one of the opportunities identified in the framework. Training family child care providers (providers) on how to prepare healthy foods for children in their care is 1 way to improve the food environment in child care settings. University of Minnesota Extension (Extension) recognized the majority of culinary nutrition education training and curricula for ECE settings were designed for child care centers.Nutrition for Healthy Aging: A 1-Time, Nutrition-Centered Program Reaching Aging Adults
In the US, 10,000 people are turning 65 years old every day; by 2060, nearly 1 in 4 people are projected to be aged ≥ 65 years.1,2 This is likely to have a significant impact on the health care system, as an estimated 80% of older Americans have at least 1 chronic disease: hypertension, diabetes, and/or high cholesterol.3 Of these individuals, 70% experienced a physical decline because of modifiable risk factors, which include poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and/or smoking.3 This means that more than one half of the older population may have the ability to positively impact their health outcomes by changing lifestyle behaviors that are within their control.Sermons to Address Obesity in Partnership With African American and Latino Churches
African American and Latino communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and diet-related diseases in the US.1 Faith-based organizations can be important partners in promoting health among African American and Latino congregants through infrastructure, programming, and strong social networks.2,3 Clergy, in particular, can provide public health information and promote healthy behaviors using their moral authority, visibility, and credibility.4–6Yumbox: A Tool to Improve the Quality of Preschoolers’ Packed Lunches
Americans eat less than the recommended amounts of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and dairy products.1 Research also shows that 91% of preschool-aged children do not consume recommended amounts of vegetables.2,3 In addition, empty calories from added sugars and solid fats contribute 40% of total daily calories for 1–18-year-olds.1 Poor dietary consumption is often cited as a major contributor to childhood obesity and related health issues. Currently, 13.9% of American children aged 2–5 years are categorized as obese.Open Educational Resource-Enabled Pedagogy to Improve Student Outcomes in Nutrition Course
Online learning is a critical component of higher education. In 2017, the US Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics reported that one-third of all college and university students were enrolled in at least 1 online course.1 In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, online course delivery has flourished,2 but there are still unique challenges in online instruction: feelings of isolation,3 perceived lack of rigor/effectiveness,1 lack of student engagement,4 greater student attrition,5 and participation barriers for under-represented students.Implementing Tablet-Based Health Education in a Community Health Center
The health care system has grown more complex, while the demand for health services has increased exponentially because of patient comorbidities. This places health care providers under pressure to meet patients’ health needs in a timely manner while also providing tailored health education to optimize outcomes.1,2 Although it is crucial to engage patients in health education, the time allotted for visits is not always sufficient to have an in-depth discussion about health maintenance.Cauliflower Power Storybooks and Cruciferous Vegetable Consumption in Preschool Children
The preschool years (ages 3–5 years) are a critical period for healthy habit formation, when the acceptance of new foods, especially vegetables, is crucial to the development of healthy dietary patterns.1 The World Health Organization highlights the preschool environment as an optimal setting for obesity prevention programs.2 Programs designed to improve children's vegetable acceptance may shape the early development of dietary patterns that have been shown to protect against the development of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions in adolescence and adulthood.Integration of Objective Structured Clinical Examinations Into Graduate Nutrition and Dietetics Curricula
Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) with standardized patients (SPs)1 are used in health professions training programs to allow students to demonstrate patient history taking, examination, education, counseling, and interpersonal communication for practice and evaluation before patient interaction.2–6 Simulated clinical environments with SPs provide a format for educators to evaluate students’ clinical decision-making and problem-solving skills.6 In graduate nutrition programs, OSCEs and teaching OSCEs (TOSCEs) can assess students’ readiness for clinical practice in patient communication, interviewing, counseling, and Nutrition-Focused Physical Examination (NFPE).“Nutritainment” – A Nutrition Education Module for Indian Adolescents
Health education is considered one of the key drivers for promoting health-related behaviors.1 Nutrition and lifestyle information presented convincingly to adolescents has the potential to influence their behaviors. As adolescents go through rapid cognitive transitions, there is a constant need to experiment with innovative trajectories in nutrition communication that are adolescent “psyche”-centric rather than “topic”-centric.2 In India, which has the world's highest adolescent population, this is a continuous and demanding process.Super Tasters and Mighty Movers: A Booster Program for Sustained Behavior Change in Early Elementary School
Early childhood is a time when the development of healthful eating and activity behaviors occurs; thus, it is a critical window for obesity prevention efforts. A number of obesity prevention interventions targeting children have demonstrated short-term nutrition and activity behavior change.1,2 Although interventions may be effective in helping individuals achieve temporary behavior change, it is quite difficult to maintain these changes.3Farm to Future: A Virtual Summer Nutrition Culinary Camp for Kids
Food literacy has been defined as “the complex, related set of skills, knowledge, and behaviors needed in the everyday practicalities of meeting nutrition recommendations.”1 Amin et al2 recently validated a tool to measure food literacy: the Tool for Food Literacy Assessment in Children (TFLAC). The TFLAC assesses 5 domains of nutrition or food knowledge and skills: cooking skills, cooking knowledge, nutrition knowledge, self-efficacy regarding eating, and food systems knowledge.2 According to a review evaluating the relationship between food literacy and dietary intake in adolescents, 8 of 13 studies found that adolescents with higher nutrition knowledge or who engaged in more frequent food preparation had healthier dietary intake patterns.Using Facebook Live to Enhance the Reach of Nutrition Education Programs
This Great Educational Materials article describes the University of Kentucky Nutrition Education Program (KYNEP) delivery of Healthy Choices for Every Body (HCEB), a nutrition education curriculum, through Facebook Live (Facebook, Inc, Menlo Park, CA) to extend the reach of nutrition education to low-income adults who face barriers in participating in face-to-face nutrition education classes. The purpose of this article was 2-fold: to demonstrate how to use Facebook Live to deliver a standard nutrition education program to low-income audiences, and to illustrate potential similar learning outcomes between in-person and Facebook Live delivery methods of the same nutrition education content.Making the Healthy Choice the Easy Choice: Online Training in Policy, Systems, and Environmental Approaches
In response to high obesity rates among low-income populations in the US,1 2 of the largest federal nutrition education programs, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), have shifted their program guide to include using policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) approaches to complement direct nutrition education.2,3 However, research with both cooperative extension and public health practitioners—the most common implementers of EFNEP and SNAP-Ed—indicates that many practitioners lack the knowledge or skills needed to incorporate PSE approaches into their efforts.Macronutrient composition of the diet and long-term changes in weight and waist circumference in the EPIC–Italy cohort
The overall macronutrient composition of diet, rather than just calorie intake, may influence long-term changes of anthropometry. We investigated relationships between dietary macronutrient composition and long-term changes in weight and waist circumference in participants of the EPIC–Italy – the Italian section of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition – study.Creaciones en la Cocina: A Culturally Adapted Nutrition Education Curriculum for Spanish-Speaking Latinos
As the Latino population in Utah continues to grow steadily, it lags behind several state health measures and indicators such as poverty, diabetes, cholesterol, physical activity, overweight/obesity and poor physical health.1 To address these health concerns, the Utah Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) staff made concerted efforts to reach out to the Latino community by translating handouts into Spanish and hiring bilingual and/or ethnically matched educators who are trained using existing nutrition education curricula written in English.Designing Retrospective Evaluation Tools for Limited-Literacy Adults
Literacy is a concern in the US, including California, with 22% to 23% of adults reading at the lowest level of literacy, referred to as below basic.1,2 Another 25% score in the next level of literacy, described as low. For these adults, literacy ranges from being unable to read and understand any written information in English to being able to locate easily identifiable information in short, commonplace prose text, but nothing more advanced.1,2 Educators delivering federal nutrition education programs in multiple languages to low-income communities serve a disproportionate number of program clients with limited literacy skills.Snack It Up for Parents: Brief Videos and Tip Sheets for Promoting Vegetable Snacks to School-Aged Children
National survey data indicate that virtually all children aged 6–11 years eat ≥1 snack/d, with nearly 80% eating multiple snacks.1 Although snacks contribute nearly one quarter of children's average energy intake, the most commonly consumed snack foods fail to provide key nutrients, including fiber, potassium, vitamin D, and calcium.2,3 Instead, sweet and savory foods that contribute added sugars and sodium to children's diets are most commonly consumed.3Encouraging Adults to Choose Healthy Now: A Hawai‘i Convenience Store Intervention
Convenience stores are an important source of food in lower income US communities, but they tend to carry more varieties of unhealthy options relative to healthy options.1–4 Healthy retail interventions seek to improve access to healthy food options and influence consumer behavior through the 4 P's of marketing: product, placement, promotion, and price.4,5 One strategy is displaying point-of-decision prompts (PDPs), shelf labels or signage at the point of purchase, to help customers identify healthy options and encourage them to make healthier selections.
