Culinary skills: Immediate and intermediate impacts of a peer-education intervention for adolescents

Inadequate household food preparation equipment has been identified as a barrier to home meal preparation. In a cross-sectional study of households in the United States, food secure households reported owning significantly more unique food preparation equipment items than food insecure households (mean±SD, 39.5±4.6 items vs. 34.1±5.2 items, P=0.002). Access to unique food preparation items may influence the frequency of home prepared meals and indirectly youth culinary skills education. While youth culinary skills education has been emphasized as an important component of nutrition education, the intermediate- and long-term follow-up to support such claims is lacking. The aim of the culinary skills lessons was to determine the efficacy of peer-educators compared to adult-educators in lesson fidelity as well as participant psychosocial parameters of knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy. Two culinary skills lessons were implemented, and the immediate and intermediate effects of the intervention delivered by peer-educators or adult-educators to an adolescent population were evaluated. Adolescents, 11-14 years of age, were recruited from the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, area to participate in two, 2-hour culinary skills lessons. Based on availability, youths were randomized into peer-educator group (PEG) (n=22) or adult-educator group (AEG) (n=20). Participants attended the lessons that addressed the topics of knife skills, cooking methods and recipe following. Lessons included demonstrations, hands-on practice, discussions, food tastings and physical activity. Program feasibility was measured by fidelity checklists. Participants completed psychosocial questionnaires at pre-lesson, post-lesson, 3-months post-lesson and 6-months post-lesson. All adolescents (N=42) were 12.1±1.1 years of age (mean±SD) with 50% (n=21) female and 57% (n=24) Caucasian. At 6-months post-intervention all adolescents had increased knowledge scores compared to baseline (P<0.001). Attitude, cooking self-efficacy and cooking methods self-efficacy did not significantly increase at 6-months post-lesson compared to baseline. In conclusion, peer-educators and adult-educators were equally proficient at delivering culinary skills lessons that resulted in increased participant knowledge at 6-months post-intervention. Peer-educators were able to lead culinary skills lessons with comparable fidelity as compared to adult-educators. Peer-education may be a novel approach to adolescent culinary skills education.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Food Science & Human Nutrition

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Oakley, Amanda R

Contributors dc:contributor

• Nickols-Richardson, Sharon M.

• peer-education
• culinary skills
• nutrition education

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2016 Amanda Oakley

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95552

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/95552