Good Bowls: Empowering Communities to Achieve Good Food Access and Health Equity

Equiti Foods, Llc, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

Diversity Supplement Abstract Low-income, ethnic minority status, and rural residence are strong predictors of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. Poor nutrition and food insecurity contribute to an increased risk of chronic disease, a significant public health concern among adults and children in low-income households. Equiti Foods developed Good Bowls as healthy, affordable, good-tasting, locally-produced frozen meals to address both healthy food access and economic opportunity. While Good Bowls fills a critical need, learning food resource management skills can improve nutrition quality by helping families purchase healthy foods while stretching dollars. Developing culinary skills also increases cooking confidence and teaches individuals to select and prepare healthy meal options. Delivering culinary and food resource management education through mobile health (mHealth) holds promise to easily help low-income individuals acquire new skills and reinforce nutrition behaviors. Thus, this diversity supplement aims to pilot test tailored educational messages, videos, and text-message reinforcement to encourage the uptake of culinary and food resource management skills (CulinaryFRM going forward). We hypothesize that those receiving CulinaryFRM education will have higher diet quality (assessed using the modified Med-Diet 14 item validated screener in the parent study). The Specific Aims of this diversity supplement are: (1) to pilot test CulinaryFRM, randomizing the participants in the delayed intervention control arm of the parent study to either Good Bowls + Worksite-App nudges and home-based virtual coaching + Home- based CulinaryFRM or Good Bowls + Worksite-App nudges, (2) assess the feasibility and acceptability of delivering CulinaryFRM via the mobile phone-based app of the parent study, (3) determine the efficacy of CulinaryFRM on diet quality (primary outcome assessed using the Med-Diet 14 item validated screener), culinary skills, and food resource management (FRM) skills. The information gained from this research will provide the necessary foundation for the development of mHealth-based personalized culinary nutrition-focused interventions to improve health outcomes among low-income families.