A mobile farmers’ market brings nutrition education to low-income students

Authors:
  • DEDevin Ellsworth
    Devin Ellsworth
  • JEJenny Ernst
    Jenny Ernst
  • ASAnastasia Snelling
    Anastasia Snelling
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a nutrition-education intervention delivered at low-income middle schools in Washington, DC in the USA, using a mobile farmers’ market to bring hands-on lessons to schools. The program was a partnership between a local farm and university and was funded by the United States Department for Agriculture (USDA) Team Nutrition grant. Design/methodology/approach: – Seven low-income middle schools received the intervention, which included 45-minute lessons focussed on nutrition education and sustainable farming concepts. The farmers’ market was delivered via a converted school bus, allowing for full market setup at each school to provide local fruits and vegetables as teaching tools. The nutrition-education lesson focussed on the USDA MyPlate and healthy meal planning. The farm education component focussed on organic farming principles, sustainability of local food systems, and seasonality. A six question pre- and post-survey was administered to 408 participating middle school students to assess changes in knowledge. Findings: – Overall, average scores increased from 51 to 58 percent. Nutrition knowledge questions increased from 58 to 74 percent, while agriculture questions remained constant at 43 percent. Both increases significant using a two-sample t-test (p<0.001). This suggests that students gained more nutrition education concepts in this format as compared to the agricultural concepts. Originality/value: – Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic that affects low-income communities disproportionally. Innovative strategies must be implemented to increase healthy food consumption. This case study presents such an approach and its value in increasing student knowledge of healthy behavior.

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit: