A mobile farmers’ market brings nutrition education to low-income students

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a nutrition-education intervention delivered at low-income middle schools in Washington, DC in the USA, using a mobile farmers’ market to bring hands-on lessons to schools. The program was a partnership between a local farm and university and was funded by the United States Department for Agriculture (USDA) Team Nutrition grant. Design/methodology/approach – Seven low-income middle schools received the intervention, which included 45-minute lessons focussed on nutrition education and sustainable farming concepts. The farmers’ market was delivered via a converted school bus, allowing for full market setup at each school to provide local fruits and vegetables as teaching tools. The nutrition-education lesson focussed on the USDA MyPlate and healthy meal planning. The farm education component focussed on organic farming principles, sustainability of local food systems, and seasonality. A six question pre- and post-survey was administered to 408 participating middle school students to assess changes in knowledge. Findings – Overall, average scores increased from 51 to 58 percent. Nutrition knowledge questions increased from 58 to 74 percent, while agriculture questions remained constant at 43 percent. Both increases significant using a two-sample t-test (p<0.001). This suggests that students gained more nutrition education concepts in this format as compared to the agricultural concepts. Originality/value – Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic that affects low-income communities disproportionally. Innovative strategies must be implemented to increase healthy food consumption. This case study presents such an approach and its value in increasing student knowledge of healthy behavior.