Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior Various

Interview: A survey of 1,110 parents, guardians and caregivers led by Monica D. Zuercher, PhD, MS, Nutrition Policy Institute, University of California, found that more positive parental perceptions about school meals and their benefits to families were associated with greater student meal participation. Working to ensure parents are familiar with the healthfulness and quality of school meals and the efforts schools are making to provide high-quality, appealing meals may be critical for increasing school meal participation rates.

Interview: Suzanna M. Martinez, PhD, MS, University of California San Francisco, highlights a new study that illustrates how challenging SNAP rules are for college students and those involved in their implementation. The research supports simplifying the student SNAP process to increase participation for eligible students, especially for historically minoritized racial and ethnic groups and low-income students for whom equitable access to SNAP benefits is critical.

Interview: How can parents and kids work together to reduce household food waste? Amar Laila, PhD, University of Guelph, discusses the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of a new pilot study of Weeknight Supper Savers, a whole-family food literacy intervention that teaches how to prepare, store, and eat leftovers. The tool successfully encouraged families to prepare meals together and reduced food waste.

Interview: Christine St. Pierre, MPH, RD, presents the results of a new study to determine the impact on dietary behaviors on current and former elementary school students who participated in FRESHFARM FoodPrints’ school-based gardening and food education classes over the past 15 years. Analysis revealed how this early learning positively influenced food decisions as children grew older, extending into adulthood.

Interview: Kathy Hu and Alyssa M. Button, PhD, discuss findings that showed adolescents with poor adherence to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and associated cardiometabolic risk factors continued these same patterns over the two years of the study, suggesting that the adverse effects of a poor-quality diet had already established the health risks these teenagers will face throughout life.

Interview: Ginnefer O. Cox, PhD, RD, University of Georgia, talks about the key role peer educators of nutrition education programs play when developing and testing new recipes to help individuals make nutrition-related decisions. This new research details an underexplored testing method that can effectively evaluate recipes in the community nutrition setting without formal testing at a central location.