A Cooking Intervention Increased Food Literacy of Students Who Frequently Used the Campus Food Pantry: A Pilot Program.

Objectives: Students who obtain food from a campus food pantry may benefit from participating in a nutrition/cooking intervention. Participants and methods: Twenty-seven students 18-30 years of age attending a university in the southeastern US participated in the IRB approved study. One 2-hour class was offered each week for four weeks in the on-campus cooking laboratory. Subjects indicated how often they cooked a dinner meal at home and completed the Eating and Food Literacy Behaviors Questionnaire (EFLBQ) before and after participating in the program. Results: The total EFLBQ, Factor 1 (Health and Nutrition) and Factor 3 (Food Preparation) scores, and the frequency of cooking a dinner meal at home were all higher post-program (all p < 0.05). Conclusions: This pilot study suggests that an on-campus cooking program can increase the food literacy and frequency of cooking meals by university students who obtained items from the campus food pantry.