Positive Impacts of a Vegetable Cooking Skills Program Among Low-Income Parents and Children

Objective: To evaluate the impact of a vegetable-focused cooking skills and nutrition program on parent and child psychosocial measures, vegetable liking, variety, and home availability. Design: Baseline and postcourse surveys collected 1-week after the course. Setting: Low-income communities in Minneapolis–St Paul. Participants: Parent–child dyads (n = 89; one third each Hispanic, African American, and white) with complete pre-post course data; flyer and e-mail recruitment. Intervention(s): Six 2-hour-weekly sessions including demonstration, food preparation, nutrition education lessons, and a meal. Main Outcome Measures: Parental cooking confidence and barriers, food preparation/resource management, child self-efficacy and cooking attitudes, vegetable liking, vegetable variety, and vegetable home availability. Analysis: Pre-post changes analyzed with paired t test or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results were significant at P <.05. Results: Increased parental cooking confidence (4.0 to 4.4/5.0), healthy food preparation (3.6 to 3.9/5.0), child self-efficacy (14.8 to 12.4; lower score = greater self-efficacy), parent liking of vegetables used in the course (7.8 to 8.1/10.0), vegetable variety (30 to 32/37 for parent, 22 to 24/37 for child), and home vegetable availability (16 to 18/35) (all P <.05). Conclusions and Implications: A short-term evaluation of a vegetable-focused cooking and nutrition program for parents and children showed improvements in psychosocial factors, vegetable liking, variety, and home availability.