A Scoping Review of Food Literacy Interventions

Keely O'Brien; Lesley MacDonald-Wicks; Susan E Heaney

doi:10.3390/nu16183171

A Scoping Review of Food Literacy Interventions

Nutrients. 2024 Sep 19;16(18):3171. doi: 10.3390/nu16183171.

Authors

Keely O'Brien^{1

2}, Lesley MacDonald-Wicks^{1

2}, Susan E Heaney^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ School of Health Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia.
² Hunter Medical Research Institute Food and Nutrition Research Program, School of Health Science, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia.
³ Department of Rural Health, The University of Newcastle, 20 Highfields Circuit, Port Macquarie, NSW 2444, Australia.

Abstract

Introduction: Food literacy (FL) is a rapidly emerging area of research that provides a framework to explain the interplay of food-related skills, beliefs, knowledge and practises that contribute to nutritional health and wellbeing. This review is the first to scope the current literature for FL interventions, assess their characteristics against the components provided in the most widely cited definition of FL. and describe their characteristics to identify gaps in the literature.

Methods: This review scopes original articles describing FL interventions in the Medline, CINAHL, ProQuest Education, Web of Science and AMED databases up to August 2023.

Results: Despite the heterogeneity between all seven included studies, they all demonstrated some improvements in their FL outcome measures alongside dietary intake (DI), with the greatest improvements seen in studies that employed a FL theoretical framework in intervention design. Populations at high risk of food insecurity, such as university students and people living in disadvantaged areas, were the main targets of FL interventions.

Conclusion: The minimal inclusion of FL theory amongst interventions led to an overall poor coverage of essential FL components, indicating researchers should aim to design future FL interventions with a FL theoretical framework.

Keywords: dietary outcomes; food; food literacy; food skills; interventions; nutrition and diet; nutrition education; programmes; public health.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Diet
Food Insecurity
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice*
Health Literacy*
Humans

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding. KO is undertaking her PhD (Nutrition and Dietetics) at the University of Newcastle and is supported by a University of Newcastle research training scholarship.