Keywords

Obesity; obesity intervention; nutrition; nutrition education; stem; bmi; adolescents; middle school; farm; culinary arts; cooking; nutrition knowledge; experiential learning; fruit and vegetable preference; school based nutrition education; cooking with kids

Abstract

With obesity in adolescents becoming a major health problem in the United States, there has been an expansion in the use of nutritional education programs as intervention. Effective nutrition education can decrease the incidence of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. This dissertation in practice proposes to design a nutrition education program, integrating farm and culinary activities into a nutrition education curriculum. The program is designed as a stand-alone program, but for this practice, implementation integrates the nutrition education program into the Film @ 6 after-school program – a STEM-focused program designed to assist sixth graders in their first year of middle school – at Southeast Middle School in Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina (NC). This experiential nutrition education program will provide instruction and activities in order to increase nutritional knowledge, improve culinary techniques, and increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed foods of sixth grade students as a means to address the overweight and obesity risks of middle school children. Children and adolescents are considered the priority population for intervention strategies because 70% of obese adolescents become obese adults and it is difficult to reduce excessive weight once established (Dehghan, Akhtar-Danesh, & Merchant, 2005).

Notes

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Graduation Date

2015

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Hopp, Carolyn

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College

College of Education and Human Performance

Degree Program

Education and Human Performance

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0005871

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0005871

Language

English

Release Date

August 2015

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Education and Human Performance; Education and Human Performance -- Dissertations, Academic

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