Developing Weight-Inclusive Nutrition Education for High School Health Classes
- The nutrition environment in high schools can have a profound impact on eating behaviors adolescents develop, as well as weight-based bullying they may experience.
- A weight-inclusive approach to nutrition is associated with improvements in eating behavior, body image, fat bias, and mental health outcomes, therefore it may be important that nutrition content taught and promoted in high schools is presented weight inclusively.
- This study funded by USDA HATCH ARS conducted stake-holder interviews to assess the topics covered and materials used to teach nutrition education in Vermont high school health courses.
- In Part 2 of the study we are working with health teachers to develop a sample nutrition education curriculum, that demonstrates a weight-inclusive perspective.
- Finally, we will work to provide continuing education opportunities to health educators to learn more about teaching nutrition and adopting a weight-inclusivity.
Overall Vision
We want to work with health educators to enable nutrition education to help students establish peaceful relationships with food and their bodies to prevent the development of disordered eating behaviors and anti-fat bias.
Resources
Curriculum resources are coming in Fall 2024!
Get Involved
If you’d like to be involved in this project please contact us!
Determining the Efficacy of A Weight-Inclusive Introductory Nutrition Course for College Students
- Introductory Nutrition Courses are often the first formal touch-point that students in a variety of majors have with the field of nutrition science.
- Many students in college struggle with disordered eating, and therefore learning about nutrition c
- Adopting a weight-inclusive perspective in Introductory Nutrition courses may help students heal disordered relationships with food and body rather than perpetuate them.
- In this project we will observe techniques used in a weight-inclusive large-enrollment introductory nutrition course to determine what elements are different than a traditional weight-normative framing
- Next, we will carry out a pre-post assessment of students’ knowledge of weight-inclusivity and anti-fat bias, as well as disordered eating behaviors before and after taking the course.†
Overall Vision
We hope to illustrate that delivering nutrition curriculum at the college level in a weight-inclusive way can help combat the development of eating and body image issues.
Resources
As we develop resources we’ll post them here!