I didn't do this, but I had some friends who worked at the University of Pennsylvania do an intervention with overweight, inner city youth. It involved food journals, learning how to shop, and cooking lessons complete with them making their own cookbooks. I believe their outcome variable was weight loss (anticipating a small loss in an 8 week course). I think it trended toward significance, but was somewhat disappointing. Last I checked they were going back to the drawing board. It was a small pilot study pat of a larger intervention.

I was following this somewhat tangentially, so I'm likely off on a point or two. But, here's their website: http://www.med.upenn.edu/weight/research.shtml#current

Thanks this is very helpful!

While not exactly "state of the art," you could try to use a motivational approach to encourage intake of fruits and vegetables. Motivational interviewing has been found to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables (see Resnicow et al 2001 "A motivational interviewing intervention to increase fruit and vegetable intake....."). This approach has also been found effective in improving weight loss among obese individuals (see Armstrong et al. 2011 "Motivational interviewing to improve weight loss in overweight and/or obese patients: A systematic review and meta analysis..."). Techniques such as self-monitoring, reading nutritional labels, cooking, imparting knowledge of existing risk factors, and other techniques mentioned by Erik are also essential, but if an individual is not interested in entering the discussion then the intervention is not likely to have the intended effects.

These are just my thoughts and I am not sure if they hit the mark or not.

Kind regards,

Josh

This is interesting and I definitely will follow up on your suggestions!

If the concern is related to overweight/obesity, the most important step would be to encourage the consumption of non-starchy vegetables RATHER THAN fruits, as fruits and root vegetables are high in carbohydrate. Excess carb consumption is the main factor driving weight gain.

My husband and I are on a low carb diet. Which vegetables are best?

Mary, any vegetable that grows in the ground will be higher in carbs: beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc. Also, tomatoes, corn, onions, and winter squash are carby. Many other vegetables contain some carbohydrate but are fine in smaller quantities. You can find information about carb contents of all sorts of foods at nutritiondata.com. Note that cooked vegetables raise blood sugar more quickly than the equivalent amount of raw because cooking converts some of the cellulose to glucose.

BTW, I've also been a low-carber since 2005. Amazing health benefits! :)

My husband who is a type 2 diabetic for the last 20 years on awful medication went on the wheat free low carb diet and lost 40 pounds. He has stopped taking all medication and for the first time in 20 years his blood sugar is in control again. As the cook in the family I follow the same diet and have lost 20 pounds or so. I am a believer.

I applied for funding for a project to increase backyard vegetable growing. The main aim was around sustainability rather than nutrition per se. Missed out on the funding but will submit it elsewhere. Anyway, this might be another angle you might pursue Mary - ie don't limit your search to nutrition as the focus. (And I'd be interested in what you uncover.)

Great testimonial, Mary! I know so many people who have enjoyed sustained weight loss and a variety of other health benefits through low-carbing. Keep up the great work! BTW, are you familiar with The Diabetes Solution by RIchard K. Bernstein, MD? It sounds as if you are already on track, but it's a great resource. It includes LC recipes at the back of the book.

Mark, remember during WWII when having a backyard vegetable garden was the patriotic thing to do? Perhaps you can add a food security angle...

I am working with the Greater Lansing Food Bank Community Garden program on my study of food deserts. There are 90 community gardens in the greater Lansing area. It is a good response to lack of grocery stores in the inner city.

Thanks Adrienne. Do you happen to have a reference for the "grow vegies for your country" angle? The other tack I plan to take (depending where I am applying for funding) is bees. There is international concern for bees and other pollinators. Planting vegies and fruit trees means flowers (some more than others of course), thus providing food islands in increasingly nature-denuded urban landscapes for bees as well as humans (indeed many cities, including Melbourne Australia where I am, now have rooftop bee keeping ventures (incidentally, Australia exports bees internationally)). So local honey to go with your local carrots - everybody wins!

I hope to plant a peach tree in the spring here in Michigan.

A new paper on the topic:

Promoting fruit and vegetable consumption: the role of message framing and autonomy

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23170848

Thanks Mark will check tha tout.

ON the 21rst of December, we are conducting a nutritional stigma study with 500 innercity people at a food bank distribution of free food. We have reduced our barriers/stigma survey to 5 pages measuring an interesting number of variables. We feel privileged to be invited to collect data at this event and people will like the $5 that they get for doing our survey.

The data collection event on Dec. 21rst was quite the experience. We learned inner city residents believe fresh fruit & vegetables are prohibitively expensive and rarely eaten. The mobile pantry food giveaway included a lot of processed food in the grocery basket. We saw a lot of hardship and struggle for people there. I have never worked as hard in my life as on that day.

We learned our simplified questionnaire was way too long. Several people couldn't read, many couldn't see or had physical challenges and issues of mobility. Affordable healthy food is a real issue.