Understanding How a College-Level Nutrition Course Impacts Food Security Status

Background

The high prevalence of food insecurity in college students is a pressing issue. Increasing nutrition knowledge has potential to help improve factors related to food security. While a positive correlation between food literacy and food security status has been reported, little research has explored the impact of an existing college-level nutrition class.

Objective

To investigate how a college-level nutrition course impacts behaviors related to food-acquisition coping strategies.

Study Design, Settings, Participants

Students at the University of California, Davis were recruited from an introductory nutrition course taught both online and in-person (intervention) and other introductory courses (comparison). Students completed a pre-survey within the first two weeks of the quarter and a post-survey eight weeks later. Data were collected using a 65-item questionnaire that included several validated modules: the Money Expenditure Survey (MES), Coping Strategy Scale (CSS), Perceived Stress Scale, nutrition knowledge survey, and the USDA Adult Food Security Survey Module.

Measurable Outcome/Analysis

ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc corrections was used to assess differences across groups using STATA 13.0v. Significance was determined using p<0.05.

Results

Nutrition knowledge significantly increased within the in-person intervention group (n=282; 1.18 ± 5.24; p<0.01), and the online intervention group (n=373; 1.69 ± 5.12; p<0.01), while nutrition knowledge decreased in the comparison group (n=304; -1.41 ± 3.82 p<0.01). The CSS score significantly improved in the online intervention group (-2.62 ± 12.18; p<0.01), as compared to the other groups. In all groups, more students reported experiencing low or very low food security status from pre to post, with significant changes observed in the in-person intervention and comparison groups. Perceived stress also increased across all groups (p<0.05). There were no differences across groups in MES.

Conclusions

Although nutrition knowledge improved in the intervention groups and CSS improved in the online intervention group, food security status decreased and perceived stress increased. Further analyses will determine the importance of nutrition knowledge on MES and CSS and their relationship to temporal fluctuations in food security status.

Funding

None