Farm to Fork: A Culinary- and Farm-Enhanced Nutrition Education Program

With obesity in adolescents becoming a major health problem in the United States, there has been an expansion in the use of nutritional education programs as intervention. Effective nutrition education can decrease the incidence of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. This dissertation in practice proposes to design a nutrition education program, integrating farm and culinary activities into a nutrition education curriculum. The program is designed as a stand-alone program, but for this practice, implementation integrates the nutrition education program into the Film @ 6 after-school program – a STEM-focused program designed to assist sixth graders in their first year of middle school – at Southeast Middle School in Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina (NC). This experiential nutrition education program will provide instruction and activities in order to increase nutritional knowledge, improve culinary techniques, and increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed foods of sixth grade students as a means to address the overweight and obesity risks of middle school children. Children and adolescents are considered the priority population for intervention strategies because 70% of obese adolescents become obese adults and it is difficult to reduce excessive weight once established (Dehghan, Akhtar-Danesh, & Merchant, 2005).

Author dc:creator

• Ray, Vivian

Contributors dc:contributor

• Hopp, Carolyn

• Obesity; obesity intervention; nutrition; nutrition education; stem; bmi; adolescents; middle school; farm; culinary arts; cooking; nutrition knowledge; experiential learning; fruit and vegetable preference; school based nutrition education; cooking with kids
• Education
• Dissertations, Academic -- Education and Human Performance; Education and Human Performance -- Dissertations, Academic

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

CFE0005871

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-1713