Cooking for Change! Cooking Demonstrations and Behavior Change in Clients of Emergency Food Sites

An abstract of a study by Rourke et al that describes the benefits of using the foods available for distribution at emergency food assistance sites in cooking demonstration to facilitate behavior change is presented. According to the Feeding America, Hunger in America 2010 report, in 2009, 37 million people received food from an emergency site, a 46% increase from 2006. Emergency food assistance programs (EFAP) in New York City distribute food items in communities with a high prevalence of health disparities, to diverse populations of low-income, multi-ethnic individuals. Preparing healthy meals using items distributed at the EFAP site allows participants to discover how to overcome challenges with preparing healthy meals with foods available for distribution. Community nutrition educators are trained to conduct cooking demonstrations by registered dietitians another professionals in the field of nutrition. Cooking demonstrations translate evidence based research into actions that are applicable the lives of the participants. After analyzing objective information collected from cooking demonstrations, they found the approach has effectively inspired behavior change.