Abstract:

Food literacy is the knowledge, skills, and behaviours needed to plan, select, prepare, and eat food according to dietary guidelines, supporting a healthy, sustainable diet. Its four core components are planning, selecting, preparing and eating. Promoting food literacy through social-level education and awareness ensures healthy, sustainable food for all. This Service-Learning (S-L) project was created to enhance institutional engagement and social support, aiming to improve food literacy among vulnerable groups. The S-L approach merges students’ commitment and academic learning by serving the local community. Faculty members trained students to design, plan and carry out activities to improve food literacy.

Twenty-two students from different levels of the Degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics (HND) and PhD students participated in this second edition. They created educational materials (activities, games and infographics). Among the activities designed by the students were a nutrition-themed word search, a food label error detection task, a “build a healthy plate” activity, a food trivia quiz, and a healthy snack workshop, among others. Nutrition infographics were uploaded to https://www.derechosbebesprematuros.org/materiales-educacion-nutricional/ website. Students presented nutrition topics through lectures and storytelling and conducted training which featured a supermarket visit. They delivered PowerPoint presentations on One Health, sustainability, food labelling and food hygiene practices.

Upon completion of the project, an independent evaluation was undertaken to assess participants’ self-reported perceptions of their learning outcomes throughout the process. The findings revealed that participants perceived a substantial increase in their knowledge acquisition.

In this second edition, target populations included: Preschool Education (Montpellier School), Primary Education (Juan de Valdés School), Secondary Education (Asunción de Vallecas School), families with preterm infants (supported by APREM, Spain’s first association for parents of premature babies), and LGBTIQA+ youth (supported by the Eddy-G Foundation, Spain’s first shelter for LGBTIQA+ youth aged 18–30 at risk of social exclusion).

As part of the project, two of the schools participated in the assessment of knowledge after the intervention using different evaluation tools. Learning outcomes were assessed through a pre-post design in Montpellier school that included a questionnaire with five questions. The median number of correct responses increased in four of the five questions on the post-intervention test compared with the pre-intervention assessment. Plickers were used to assess learning outcomes in Juan de Valdés School. Most of the questions were answered correctly by at least, 60% of students.

Overall, this S-L project proved to be an effective strategy for enhancing students’ academic and professional competencies while promoting food literacy and healthy, sustainable eating habits among vulnerable community groups.

Keywords:

Food Literacy, nutrition education, vulnerability, food sustainability.