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.
- 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.
- 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 worked with health teachers to develop a sample nutrition education curriculum, that demonstrates a weight-inclusive perspective.
- Currently we are testing the curriculum with multiple teachers and their classes to asses efficacy for both teachers and students.
- Finally, we will work to provide continuing education opportunities to health educators to learn more about teaching nutrition and adopting a weight-inclusivity.
Examining Diet Culture in Media and Popular Culture
- Media and figures in popular culture often promote ideas around nutrition and health that are rooted in diet culture
- It is important to understand how consumers of media and fans of popular figures are impacted by dialogue around food, bodies, weight, and health
- We examined nutrition or weight-related content on TikTok and found that much of it was weight-normative, presented by non-experts, and promoted the thin ideal
- We also studied fans reactions to Taylor Swift’s disclosures about her own frustrations with conforming to the thin ideal and found that Swift served as a role model for those struggling with disordered eating, yet Swift’s individual disclosures did not eliminate instances of anti-fat bias and objectification displayed by fans.
Overall Vision
We aim to better understand how diet culture is perpetuated or challenged in popular culture and various forms of media
Publications
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!