Project Director

White, Diedri

Department Examiner

Howard-Baptiste, Shewanee; Hamilton, Kara

Department

Dept. of Health and Human Performance

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Historically, the intake of fruits and vegetables by children is low, and children in low-income environments are even less likely to consume the recommended fruits and vegetables each day. Fruit and vegetable consumption is linked to obesity which leads to other detrimental diseases such as cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes mellitus. The purpose of this intervention was to evaluate the effects of an afterschool nutrition education in a low-income middle school setting. A pre-survey and post-survey were implemented to evaluate how the intervention impacted the participants’ general nutrition knowledge, open-mindedness to taste unfamiliar fruits and vegetables (FVs), and intake of FVs and common beverages. Paired-sample t-tests were used to assess differences between the pre-survey and post-survey data. All analyses were performed using SPSS version 22.0.00, and the priori significance level was set to alpha <0.05. The results indicated a significant increase in the quality of smart beverage choices from baseline (12.40+3.50 score) to the end of the 16-week intervention (13.73+2.28 score), (t=2.256(14), p=0.041). There was a significant decrease in nutrition knowledge from baseline (7.40+1.40 score) to the end of the 16-week intervention (6.47+ 2.17 score), (t=-2.226 (14), p=0.043). No other significant differences were observed.

Acknowledgments

Thesis Director: Diedri White, DrPH, MS, RD, LDN Departmental Examiner: Shewanee Howard-Baptiste, PhD Departmental Examiner: Kara Hamilton, PhD

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

5-2017

Subject

Children -- Nutrition; Food habits; Vegetables in human nutrition; Fruit in human nutrition

Keyword

Nutrition education; Low-income; Middle school; Fruits; Vegetables

Discipline

Dietetics and Clinical Nutrition

Document Type

Theses

Extent

28 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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