Funded Projects

Healthier Eating Through Culturally-responsive Cooking Classes

Project Year

2024

City & State

Sacramento, California

Program Name

CATCH Resident

Topic

Nutrition

Program Description

Problem and Primary setting Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have grown to become the major cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Most NCDs are associated with modifiable lifestyle factors including diet and activity. Prior studies have shown that diets that have higher consumption of fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of obesity as well as prevent NCDs. A needs-assessment conducted last year at the Sacramento County Health Center (SCHC) looked at the reasons why it may be difficult for our patients and families to eat a healthy diet. Although most families surveyed did not show concern for difficulties finding different foods, they did report that some barriers to healthy eating included lack of available affordable recipes and picky eating. Furthermore, public data showed that Food Insecurity Rate in Sacramento County in 2019 was of 11.0% and the number of beneficiaries in the current county programs such as CalFresh and California Food Assistance Program, Prevention Meals Campaign or Women, Infants and Children (WIC) has been increasing over the past few years (Cal fresh Jan 2019: 195,896 beneficiaries; Jan 2022: 210,848 beneficiaries) (WIC Jan 2019: 19,438 participants; Jan 2022: 21,428 participants). The CDC report from 2021 showed that 50 % of children aged 1-5 years old in California consumed vegetables less than once a day. There have been prior interventions aiming to increase food and nutrition literacy in children through basic food preparation, education on healthy eating behaviors, and food choices. However, there has been more emphasis recently on developing food-related skills to teach children how to improve their nutrition.   Project Goal Although there are available resources for food distribution throughout the state, the aim of this project is to identify the best way for families to incorporate vegetables and healthy eating by providing them with culturally responsive recipes and other ways to incorporate healthy foods in their daily diet by using ingredients they would find at food pantries.   Proposed Intervention The focus of this program will be to use cooking classes to engage both children and parents in the process of healthy meal preparations going from listing ingredients to preparing the ingredients and cooking together while also discussing what barriers the families are experiencing to being able to repeat those steps at home. We will work on developing a healthy and easy vegetable forward recipe book with affordable ingredients to give families and to recreate together during the cooking classes. Prior to the classes, we will be getting information on their food security status to screen which families would be eligible for the program. They will then participate in 4 monthly cooking classes. There will be a pre- and post- intervention survey focusing on vegetable consumption as well as how they enjoyed the course, the cost of their groceries, what they would improve on the course, and explore other barriers to healthy eating they are experiencing. They will then receive a follow up phone call 6 months later to follow up on their vegetable consumption after the intervention. We will be working with the Food Literacy Center who has extensive experience in teaching nutrition to culturally diverse and low-income communities and how to adjust their family recipes to add more healthy ingredients.   Anticipated Outcomes Our hope is that having the cooking classes will increase family’s knowledge of healthy foods and increase comfort with cooking vegetable forward meals as well as getting children involved with their meals. We hope to get a better understanding of family food resources and the best ways to provide support and education for our families. 

Project Goal

Our main goal is to increase children’s vegetable intake and parent’s comfort making healthy foods for families experiencing food insecurity and who get their health care at Sacramento County Health Center (SCHC) through monthly cooking and nutrition classes over the span of 4 months measured using a pre and post survey as well as to provide families with local food resources and easy vegetable forwards recipes.

Project Objective 1

By August 2024, we will have a handout of local resources and information on federal food aids along with recipes to hand out to families both as part of the project and as a document that any provider at SCHC can give to families that get health care at the clinic. 

Project Objective 2

By December 2024, we will have conducted the monthly cooking classes (4 classes per cohort with a total of 8 classes) with 2 cohorts of 4 families (1 English-speaking, 1 Spanish-speaking)

Project Objective 3

By June 2025, we will have analyzed all the data collected from our project and gathered feedback from all 8 families to implement changes to make this a larger and sustainable program at the SCHC.

AAP District

District IX

Institutional Name

UC Davis

Contact 1

Claire Chin Foo, MD