Abstract
Food literacy (FL) and nutrition literacy (NL) are concepts that can help individuals to navigate the current food environment. Building these skills and knowledge at a young age is important for skill retention, confidence in food practices and supporting lifelong healthy eating habits. The objectives of this systematic review were to: (i) identify existing tools that measure FL and NL among children and/or adolescents and (ii) describe the psychometric properties. A 4-phase protocol was used to systematically retrieve articles. The search was performed in May 2021. Study characteristics and psychometric properties were extracted, and a narrative synthesis was used to summarise findings. Risk of bias was assessed using the COSMIN checklist. Six databases were searched to identify current tools. Children (2-12 years) and adolescents (13-18 years) participated in this study. Twelve tools were identified. Three tools measured FL, 1 tool measured NL, 4 tools measured both FL and NL, and 4 tools measured subareas of NL-more specifically, critical NL, food label and menu board literacy. Most tools were self-reported, developed based on a theoretical framework and assessed some components of validity and/or reliability for a specific age and ethnic group. The majority of tools targeted older children and adolescents (9-18 years of age), and one tool targeted preschoolers (3-6 years of age). Most widely used definitions of FL and NL do not acknowledge life-stage specific criterion. Continued efforts are needed to develop a comprehensive definition and framework of FL and NL appropriate for children, which will help inform future assessment tools.
Highlights
The reasons for exclusion included: the article was outside the scope of the review (n 445), not a primary research article (n 128), did not include children or adolescents as the study population (n 102), did not provide information on the development or validation of the Food literacy (FL) or nutrition literacy (NL) measure (n 45), or not in English (n 15)
While FL was evaluated among students, their definition only considered knowledge relating to cultivation practices and the processing of finger millet(20)
This review provides a current snapshot of existing tools assessing FL and NL among children and adolescents
Summary
This systematic review was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines(17). This systemic review was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42021241819). Search strategy A systematic search of the literature was completed by 2 review authors (N.C. and M.P.). Key words were identified through the expert guidance of a research librarian in addition to being based on previous literature reviews(15,16,18). The search terms included: preschool* OR child* OR adolescen* OR teen* AND ‘food literacy’ OR ‘food skills’ OR ‘nutrition literacy’. The complete search strategy for each database is provided on the Online Supplementary Table S1. Forward citation searching was used on the articles included in the final review
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