012–Food Literacy: Can Pediatric Endocrinology Nurses Focus Upstream?

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Background: American families are spending less time procuring, preparing and cooking meals at home. As well, there is less time dedicated to nutrition education in schools. Food literacy is defined as “a collection of inter-related knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to plan, manage, select, prepare, and eat foods to meet needs and determine food intake, as well as, the scaffolding that empowers individuals, households, communities or nations to protect diet quality through change and support dietary resilience over time.” Adolescents generally lack food literacy skills and increasingly consume food away from home with fast food meals and processed snacks. Approximately 1 in 3 adolescents in the U.S. are obese, increasing their risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Upstream efforts continue to be explored to combat rising obesity rates. Programs that promote food literacy in adolescents have the potential to influence healthy lifestyles. Purpose: To inform pediatric endocrinology nurses about food literacy, its components, and existing food literacy education programs ready for implementation. Description of Topic: A literature review on food literacy was completed. High food literacy has been associated with improved eating of a healthy diet, including more fruits and vegetables and less fast food. Food literacy programs should address adolescents’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes to make healthy diet choices. Potential topics include gardening, recipe reading, food label reading, learning about healthy vs. unhealthy foods, food preparation and cooking, animal welfare, and farm to table slow food concepts. The USDA SNAP-Ed website provides well developed, user-friendly food literacy teaching ideas with accompanying learning objectives, lesson plans, and teaching strategies that could readily be implemented by pediatric endocrinology nurses. Clinical Implications: Pediatric endocrinology nurses typically provide care to adolescents with obesity and its related comorbidities. Pediatric endocrinology nurses have an opportunity to expand their practice to primary and secondary prevention of obesity, using upstream health education to promote adolescents’ food literacy. By partnering with schools, churches, Boys and Girls clubs, and Scouts troops, pediatric endocrinology nurses may offer health education, building food literacy skills in whole communities with the ultimate goal of slowing the rise in obesity rates. Food literacy has been described as “the ability of an individual to understand food in a way that they develop a positive relationship with it, including food skills and practices across the lifespan in order to navigate, engage, and participate within a complex food system. It's the ability to make decisions to support the achievement of personal health and a sustainable food system considering environmental, social, economic, cultural, and political components. The core of food literacy is the adolescent’s ability to use food knowledge and skills to make healthy dietary choices and encompasses aspects of planning and managing, selecting, preparing, and eating healthy foods.