Self-regulation Capacity Of Low-income Mothers In Community-based Nutrition Program

Abstract

Diet is strongly associated with many risk factors for chronic disease. Educational programs such as the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) are designed to improve dietary behaviors among low-income populations. Although EFNEP has seen improvements, they do not yet meet recommendations. Self-regulation is the process of guiding thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to stay in line with perceived goals. Previous studies have been successful in eliciting behavior change when improving self-regulation in conjunction with dietary education. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine self-regulation in EFNEP participants and its relationship to participants change in dietary behavior. METHODS: All participants were currently enrolled in EFNEP and were asked to complete an additional self-regulation survey. This survey included five questions on a Likert scale from 1-5, with 5 indicating high self-regulation. These were averaged to assess overall self-regulation capacity pre- and post-program. Fruit and vegetable intake were measured using EFNEPs current diet-recall survey. RESULTS: On average, the participants had low levels of self-regulation both pre- and post-intervention (2.74 ± 0.71 and 2.59 ± 0.78, respectively). Regarding vegetable intake, there was no statistically significant change from pre- to post-program (1.51 ± 1.36 and 1.42 ± 1.32 cups, respectively). However, there was a statistically significant different regarding fruit intake, increasing from 0.86 ± 0.94 to 1.39 ± 1.39 cups per day. Neither fruit nor vegetables increased to MyPlate recommendations. CONCLUSIONS: Participants self-regulation capacity was on average low, and did not increased from pre- to post-program. Results also indicate that fruit and vegetable intake did not reach MyPlate recommendations. From these results, we can conclude that self-regulation training may be a necessary supplement to the program to see improvements in the participants dietary behavior.