Perspectives of Black and Hispanic Children Living in Under-Resourced Communities on Meal Preparation and Grocery Shopping Behaviors: Implications for Nutrition Education

Abstract

Minority children living in under-resourced communities are at the greatest risk for obesity and poor diet quality. Child involvement in meal preparation may be a helpful strategy to improve diet quality. This paper explores minority children’s perspectives regarding this. Eighteen children participated in a mixed methods study (online surveys, telephone interviews). Descriptive statistics were calculated for child demographic and psychosocial factors. Thematic analysis was used to code and analyze the interviews. Most children reported having cooking experience (83%) and cooking with family (94%) and exhibited high cooking self-efficacy (21.8 ± 2.9) and positive cooking attitudes (25.7 ± 4.4). Children reported helping with meal preparation (50%) and grocery shopping (41%) sometimes. The qualitative data further supported the results obtained from the children’s psychosocial factors. Most children noted the importance of learning to cook with an emphasis on life skills. Children also shared their level of involvement in cooking and grocery shopping. Most children reported using technology when cooking to find demonstration videos and recipes. These findings highlight that minority children participate in meal preparation and grocery shopping. Their perspectives are important for the development of nutrition education programs to achieve equitable dietary outcomes in minority families living in under-resourced communities.

The impact of the cost of living crisis and food insecurity on food purchasing behaviours and food preparation practices in people living with obesity

“…It is likely that PLWO and food insecurity use these food preparation practices as a way of reducing utility costs associated with food preparation. Additionally, energy-saving appliances, such as slow cookers and air fryers, may be used due to the convenience they offer (Callender et al, 2021;Kopetsky et al, 2021), and although air fryers are viewed by households with low-income as healthier than traditional frying methods (Adams, 2023), their use does not necessarily determine that the product chosen to be cooked is any healthier. Likewise, meals that do not require cooking tend to be more highly processed (Parnham et al, 2022) and so consumption is likely to elicit a low quality diet (Harb et al, 2023).…”