Convivial cooking: Impacts of an educational intervention on college students’ food agency

Abstract

Objective: This research examines the effects of educational materials, delivered with “take-home and cook-with-friends” meal kits, on college students’ food agency. Participants: In the spring of 2021, 186 students were recruited at a US public university and randomly allocated into either an intervention group that received meal kits and educational materials or a control group that received only meal kits. Methods: Meal kits containing local ingredients were distributed weekly to the participants and surveys were conducted to measure participants’ food agency, using the Cooking and Food Provisioning Action Scale (CAFPAS). Hypothesis tests and regression analysis were then conducted to examine the educational intervention’s effects on the CAFPAS scores. Results: The educational intervention had a positive and statistically significant effect on students’ CAFPAS scores. Conclusions: Educational interventions hold promise in enhancing college students’ food agency, at least in the short term.

Keywords:

• College students
• control and intervention groups
• educational intervention
• food agency
• meal kits

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Food Systems Research Center (FSRC) at the University of Vermont (UVM) for its financial support for this project, the UVM Hillel organization for helping recruit students and providing the meal kits, and Matt Vogel, Lindsey Sigal, Sophie Sherbin, and Leah Kostick for their assistance in this project.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America, and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the University of Vermont.

Data availability statement

Data used in this paper are available from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Food Systems Research Center at the University of Vermont.