Purpose: This study examines if participation in an online nutrition education program holds promise for improving mealtime practices in families using SNAP and WIC.
Design: Pre-post self-report surveys.
Setting: Digital program delivered online, nationally in the United States.
Sample: Two hundred fifty-seven parents receiving SNAP and/or WIC.
Intervention: Parents signed up to participate in Affordable Flavors, an online self-guided 30-day meal plan, developed by culturally diverse dietitians, aligned with the Dietary Guidelines, and linked with social media support.
Measures: Overall program utilization and acceptability were assessed along with parent meal preparation practices, diet quality of meals served to children, self-efficacy, mealtime stress, grocery spending, and food insecurity.
Analysis: Paired t-tests (continuous variables) and McNemar's tests (categorical variables).
Results: Overall program utilization and acceptability were high. Participants reported improvements in meal preparation practices (t(255) = 6.6, P < .001), diet quality of meals served to children (t(245) = 4.0, P < .001), and self-efficacy (t(251) = 10.0, P < .001), and decreases in grocery spending (t(175) = -4.3, P < .001), mealtime stress (t(256) = -8.8, P < .001) and food insecurity (26.8% vs 10.9%, P < .001).
Conclusion: Affordable Flavors is an acceptable, cost-effective, and easily disseminatable program that holds promise for improving parent self-efficacy to prepare and serve healthy meals to children and increase diet quality in families receiving SNAP and WIC. Engaging online nutrition education programs that can be used by a variety of health professionals, especially in settings where direct nutrition education services are not feasible or cost prohibitive, are needed.
Keywords: diet; family mealtime practices; food insecurity; health behavior; nutrition education.