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. 2022 Apr 27:10:719015.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.719015. eCollection 2022.

Children's Afterschool Culinary Education Improves Eating Behaviors

Susanne Schmidt  1 , Martin W Goros  1 , Jonathan A L Gelfond  1 , Katherine Bowen  2 , Connie Guttersen  2 , Anne Messbarger-Eguia  2 , Suzanne Mead Feldmann  2 , Amelie G Ramirez  1   3
Affiliations

Children's Afterschool Culinary Education Improves Eating Behaviors

Susanne Schmidt et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Objectives: Culinary education may be one way to improve children's eating behaviors. We formatively evaluated the effect of a hands-on afterschool 12-module, registered dietitian-led culinary education program on healthy eating behaviors in a predominately Hispanic/Latino, low-socioeconomic community.

Methods: Of 234 children participating in the program, 77% completed both pre- and post-assessment surveys (n = 180; mean age 9.8 years; 63.3% female; 74.3% Hispanic/Latino, 88.4% receiving free/reduced lunch). In addition to program satisfaction, we assessed changes in children's self-reported fruit, vegetable, and whole-grain consumption, knowledge, and culinary skills using binary and continuous mixed effects models. We report false discovery rate adjusted p-values and effect sizes.

Results: 95.5% of participants reported liking the program. Improved whole grain consumption had a medium effect size, while effect sizes for whole grain servings and vegetable consumption were small, but significant (all p < 0.05). Culinary skills increased between 15.1 to 43.4 percent points (all p < 0.01), with medium to large effect sizes.

Conclusions: The program was well-received by participants. Participants reported improved eating behaviors and culinary skills after program completion. Therefore, this hands-on afterschool culinary education program can help improve healthy eating in a predominantly Hispanic/Latino, low-socioeconomic community.

Keywords: Latinos; afterschool culinary education; children; effect sizes; evaluation; nutrition.

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Conflict of interest statement

SF is the CEO and AM-E is the Vice President, Strategy and Operations of the CHEF (Culinary Health Education for Families) program, the program that was evaluated in this manuscript, provided feedback for the development of the evaluation plan and data collection instruments but were not involved in the analysis of the data and remained independent of the evaluation. CG and KB developed and revised the CHEF Bites Curriculum. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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