The Feasibility of Teacher and Parent Volunteers Collecting Digital Image Data of Children's Fruit and Vegetable consumption during School lunch

Abstract

Increasing children's fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption is an aim of school nutrition programs. Digital imaging (DI) is less time and resource intensive than other dietary assessment tools for evaluating whether these efforts correspond with increased FV consumption or waste. However, it is impractical for a university‐based trained dietary assessment team (UDAT) to collect DI data nationally. The study objective was to compare the feasibility of DI data collection by the UDAT to a parent volunteer dietary assessment team (PDAT) and a teacher dietary assessment team (TDAT) at two northeast elementary schools (NES‐A and NES‐B, respectively) across 19 data collection days. Uniquely labeled lanyards were distributed to children as they entered the cafeteria to allow for the formation of a matched DI pair: pre‐image of the lunch tray as the child exited the lunch line (FV selection) and a post‐image of the tray before disposal (FV waste). Feasibility was defined as the number of DI pairs captured out of the number of lanyards distributed (LD). At NES‐A, the PDAT was less proficient at collecting DI pairs (74.1%, n=218 of 294 LD) than the UDAT (81.9%, n=262 of 320 LD; RR=0.91, 95% CI=0.83‐0.99, p<0.05). At NES‐B, the TDAT was better able to capture DI pairs (95.9%, n=257 of 268 LD) than the UDAT (91.3%, n=366 of 401 LD; RR=1.05, 95% CI=1.01‐1.09, p<0.05). In a school cafeteria setting, teacher volunteers may be more suitable for collecting DI dietary assessment data than parent volunteers and university researchers.