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Background: Meals eaten away from home, particularly at fast-food restaurants, tend to have more calories, saturated and trans fats, and sodium and fewer fruits, vegetables, and whole grains than meals prepared at home, this contributes to higher body mass indexes in children and adults.
Program background: The objective of the American Heart Association’s Simple Cooking with Heart program is to improve the diet quality of Americans through increased consumption of home-prepared meals with culinary skill based nutrition education providing tools, recipes, instruction and basic skill building for preparing low-cost, heart healthy meals. The theoretical framework for this program is based upon the Socioecological Model and Social Cognitive Theory of behavior change, both proven to be successful in diet and lifestyle interventions. Primary program targets are low-income families, specifically women (moms) ages 29-54. The program includes experiential skill acquisition through “live” cooking demonstrations and a robust program website which includes tools, low cost recipes and instructional skill videos.
Evaluation Methods and Results: A third party 2-year program evaluation has measured program impact on skill acquisition, attitudinal change, change in intent, and consumption pattern change.
Conclusions: Participation in “live” cooking demonstrations was associated with positive attitudinal change and was effective in improving knowledge and skills. The program website and materials are effective interventions to improve culinary skill, attitudinal change and efficacy/confidence, and increase frequency of home prepared meals. An increase in fruits, vegetables and whole grains consumption was also observed.
Implications for research and/or practice: Implications include support for using culinary skill development programs as an effective intervention to improving diet quality and nutrition education.