Episode 5: Recipes for Community Engagement: Tailored Cooking Interventions

[Background Music]

INTRO: They feel closer to their food. They feel like the produce is not something that is distant from them to actually start to add to their dishes. When there is scarcity of food, there is usually an overconsumption of high calorie, low nutrient foods, and then that becomes the mainstay of people's diet. From the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, this is discovering hope in science.

YVONNE HYLTON: Dr. Nicole Farmer is currently the tenure track investigator at the NIH Clinical Center. She is the Section Chief of the Dietary Behaviors and Biopsychosocial Health section within the Translational, Biobehavioral, and Health Promotions Branch. My name is Yvonne Hylton from the Office of Communications and Media Relations, and I'll be your host. In today's episode, we are going to talk about the published article, Assessing Acceptability: The Role of Understanding Participant, Neighborhood, and Community Contextual Factors in Designing a Community-Tailored Cooking Intervention. And I'm very excited to have the author, Dr. Nicole Farmer here with us today. Hello and welcome Dr. Farmer.

DR. NICOLE FARMER: Hello.

HYLTON: So, cooking at home is linked to better diet quality. Your studies show that cooking at home helps people follow healthy eating guidelines by choosing better foods, feeling better about their diet, and eating fewer takeout already made meals.

HYLTON: Why are community-driven approaches significant in improving dietary habits and reducing health disparities?

FARMER: Thank you for the question and thank you for having me here today. I think that community-driven approaches are important for addressing diet disparities and health disparities because we all get our food and shop in the communities in which we live.

FARMER: The way that communities are shaped and the way that communities are invested in can determine what people eat, what's available for them to cook, and then can also determine what their food preferences become. So, we know that these are some of the leading issues that we face in terms of diet disparities and why most Americans are not meeting the dietary guidelines.

HYLTON: So along that note, what is food insecurity?

FARMER: Food insecurity is a term that has been coined by the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture. And it's a term that essentially means that within the prior 12 months, did someone run out of food, experience hunger, or run out of money to purchase food that then allowed them to potentially not eat the meals that they wanted or even have an adverse effect of weight loss occur.

HYLTON: What are some unintended consequences of food insecurity among low-income populations?

FARMER: We know that some unintended consequences can be an increased risk for obesity, increased risk for heart disease, as well as increased risk for type 2 diabetes. Some of the ways that this occurs is because when there is scarcity of food, there is usually an overconsumption of high calorie, low nutrient foods, and then that becomes the mainstay of people's diet when they have to think about economic resources versus obtaining food.

HYLTON: As the findings from this manuscript are implemented, how do people's relationship with food begin to change?

FARMER: We've seen within our study, DC Cooks, some shifts immediately after even the first cooking class that as we allow people to start to have a new experience with food, like cutting an onion for the first time, or shaving a carrot for the first time, that what they've remarked to us is that they feel closer to their food. They feel like the produce is not something that is distant from them to start to add to their dishes at home, but something that they can purchase and then utilize as opposed to thinking about not purchasing because they didn't know what to do with it.

HYLTON: If you could share one key takeaway from your research with the public, what would it be? What key insights can people in this demographic gain from this study as well?

FARMER: I think one key insight for the public is to understand that we look at community-engaged research as research that we do with people and with communities and not research that we do on communities or on people. There’s a distinct difference that's important for us to talk about to the public with regard to how we approach community-engaged research. And then for the demographic within the studies that we do, mostly the demographic are people who live in food deserts or food apartheid zones, essentially areas in which there's low access to fresh produce available through grocery stores. Participation in our research, we hope, allows them to think about more available produce that might be available in addition to changing their relationship to food and thinking about how they can actually use the produce within the grocery stores.

HYLTON: This has been great. We want to thank you for joining us today and discussing your research with us. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Discovering Hope in Science. For more episodes, please visit cc.nih.gov/podcast.