This supports an urgent need to educate adolescents as they transition to experiencing more autonomy in food choices and other lifestyle behaviors that arise with emerging adulthood.Over 50% of youth had poor diet quality in 2016. Youth are well below meeting dietary recommendations despite having quite high nutritional requirements to support a period of immense growth. Diet quality progressively decreases as youth advance in age, with high school-aged adolescents having lower diet quality compared to youth of elementary school age. In particular, adolescents aged 14–18 years do not meet recommendations for consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Adolescents in the lowest quartiles of intake for each food group tend to continue having low levels of intake into adulthood. Consistently and of particular concern, youth from low-income communities tend to have the poorest diet quality. While not the only consideration, poor diet quality of adolescents may be attenuated with advancement of food literacy. Beyond the focus of traditional nutrition education, food literacy requires understanding of food procurement and preparation. Food literacy involves having the knowledge and skills necessary to make healthy dietary choices and comprises 11 components within 4 domains and 15 attributes within 5 categories. Many nutrition education programs utilize some of these elements, however few incorporate all. Components of food literacy were extrapolated from surveying experts and young adults and attributes were identified through a scoping review of the literature. Food literacy components are specific while attributes are more thematic. For example, the component “determine what is in a food product,vertical grow table where it came from, how to store it and use it” encompasses several attributes related to food selection and preparation.

These elements include both critical knowledge, such as understanding nutrition-related information, and functional knowledge, wherein application of knowledge through skills and choices is essential, that intersect to aid in developing and maintaining healthy food behaviors. Education in one domain or category is not sufficient for achieving food literacy, instead scaffolding of knowledge and skills from the various topic areas is required. A systematic and narrative review of food literacy programs for high school-aged adolescents found that interventions at least 4 weeks in length that included opportunities for advancement in knowledge and self efficacy were most likely to affect short-term dietary behavior. Additionally, several recommendations for implementing food literacy interventions have been identified. Such recommendations include utilizing settings where adolescents normally congregate and engaging in weekly experiential activities that provide opportunities for application of food-related knowledge and skills. Furthermore, it is recommended to tailor the program approach to the specific age group being targeted and to provide opportunities that support positive youth development. Despite the need, especially considering the high rates of obesity, food literacy programs targeting older adolescents are limited. This dearth in food literacy programming prevents adolescents from gaining knowledge and skills needed to make healthy food choices as young adults and perpetuates unhealthy food practices observed during childhood. Previous findings from a study conducted within the 4-H Youth Development Program found that adolescents did not have foundational knowledge to effectively lead garden-enhanced nutrition and cooking lessons. Focus groups completed in Australia found that adolescents had some prior food-related knowledge from participation in year long required courses, but had limited opportunities to apply that knowledge through food preparation. Participants in the focus groups expressed an interest in increasing food literacy through home economics courses.

Home economics courses are increasingly rare in the United States and topics relevant to food literacy are often categorized into health courses. However, national Health Education Content Standards include a plethora of topics that must be covered in one semester and thus completing food literacy education outside of the typical school day may be more feasible. Informal settings, such as after school programs, encourage the acquisition of knowledge through lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep learning, which incorporate the people, places, and culture that every individual brings to a learning environment, whether in or outside of a formal classroom. This is especially helpful for learning concepts that directly impact learners’ everyday lives and require synthesis of various prior experiences in conjunction with newly acquired information. Unlike traditional classroom learning, which mostly applies to meeting objectives of school, such as completing exams and assignments, informal learning objectives can be directly applicable to knowledge needed for daily life activities. With this, the objective of this project was to develop a comprehensive food literacy curriculum for high school-aged adolescents to be implemented through after school programs. Developing curricula based on theories and recognizing needs of the target population are recommended for maximum efficacy. Furthermore, curricula that focus on behavior change and skill development in addition to knowledge attainment tend to be more successful. Therefore, Social Cognitive Theory and Constructivism were selected as theoretical frameworks while also considering the Social Ecological Model. Social Cognitive Theory is widely utilized in nutrition interventions and conceptualizes dietary change with consideration for the intersection of personal, environmental, and behavioral factors. Constructivism functions through a community of learners engaged in active discourse, allowing for creating knowledge together with the goal of deep and sustained learning. The Social Ecological Model provided context for factors that affect food choices of adolescents at various levels including local access, peer influence, and preparation skills, among others. The food literacy curriculum was developed following systematic procedures previously utilized to design a garden-enhanced nutrition curriculum for a multi-component school-based nutrition intervention called the Shaping Healthy Choices Program. The process began with assembling a development team including three experts in the overarching topic areas, agriculture, nutrition, and cooking, which were deemed necessary for development of food literacy through consolidation of the components and attributes, and 13 undergraduate interns. The experts collectively had extensive knowledge in curriculum development, nutrition, sustainable agriculture, food systems, garden-based education, recipe development, and cooking techniques. To develop the curriculum with intention, Backward Design was employed. The first step of Backward Design is to identify desired results,macetas 20 litros which was implemented through determining concepts that youth should learn after participating in the curriculum lessons. Interns were instructed to independently search for learning concepts by reviewing reputable resources, including peer-reviewed literature, government reports, and educational standards. Under supervision of the relevant content expert, learning concepts were grouped and consolidated into the three topic areas in addition to being reviewed for alignment with aspects of food literacy. This was proceeded by the second step of Backward Design, determine acceptable evidence , which was employed to develop learning objectives guided by authentic assessment. Authentic assessment accompanies Constructivism, requiring a product or performance and encouraging collaboration while developing new knowledge that can be applied to other tasks. The learning objectives were written in accordance with higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy to promote retention of knowledge and skills gained from participation in the lessons. The final step of Backward Design is to plan learning experience and instruction. Primary lessons were designed in accordance with the 5-Step Experiential Learning Cy cle and utilizing guided inquiry. Experiential learning was selected as the pedagogical approach to foster active learning through experience and development of skills within each lesson. Furthermore, lesson objectives were aligned so that knowledge and skills acquired during each lesson could be applied to one another and built upon as lessons progressed. Experiential learning complements constructs of Social Cognitive Theory by drawing from previous experiences and encouraging learning from others participating in the experience while also building behavioral capacity and self-efficacy through achieving learning objectives. Each intern developed an experience to achieve each learning objective and facilitated their lesson with the larger group for initial feedback. Immediately following the lesson, all interns completed guided reflection documents to facilitate constructive discussion of aspects that worked well and ones that needed improvement. Lessons were revised and implemented a second time following the same method with the full curriculum development team. Application components were also drafted to allow for learning opportunities within an agricultural space, such as a school garden, and for hands-on cooking opportunities. Additionally, home application lessons were created to extend content beyond the experience while also supporting growing and preparing food at home.Prior to pilot testing with youth, the curriculum was reviewed by an expert commit tee. This committee included individuals with expertise in curriculum development and learner-centered pedagogy in addition to experts in the three topic areas. Nine members participated in the committee and were contacted based on known content knowledge and recommendations; most committee members were university and Cooperative Extension academics. Minor edits were made following the expert committee review to improve clarity and background information provided as a facilitator introduction to each lesson. No modifications were made to the lesson procedures at this time. Pilot testing was conducted with high school-aged adolescents during after school hours in two low-income communities in Northern California. It was important to pilot test with representatives of the intended target audience to ensure that authentic assessments were challenging but achievable. The first pilot took place in a suburban community at a community center in collaboration with two after school programs. Lessons were conducted at the community center and nearby community garden three days per week, over five weeks, to an average of 12 participants. The second pilot occurred at a high school during after school hours in a rural community. This pilot was delivered in the multipurpose room and school garden once a week, for 12 weeks, to an average of eight participants. Participation in both pilots was completely voluntary and concluded after all lessons were delivered. Participants of both pilots received home kits for hydroponically growing lettuce and basic cooking supplies. The curriculum lessons and application activities for both pilots were facilitated by an educator trained in learner-centered pedagogy who was not involved in the initial curriculum development. The principle author of the curriculum was also present at each pilot lesson to serve as an observer. Both the facilitator and observer completed observation sheets that were modified from the previous method to include additional structure in accordance with each component of the 5-Step Experiential Learning Cycle. Observations encompassed elements that worked well in helping participants achieve the predetermined authentic assessments for each lesson and areas requiring improvement. Additionally, comments regarding level of engagement, such as number of youth on-task and the proportion of youth actively completing lesson assignments, were included in the procedure and sharing, processing, and generalizing segments. The observation sheet also featured an open notes section where ideas for improvement could be documented. The facilitator and observer met the following day after each lesson to compare observation sheets and come to a consensus on suggested lesson revisions. Following each completed pilot, informal group interviews were held with participants to gain qualitative insight into acceptability and enjoyment of the lessons. Revisions were made as needed and implemented at the subsequent pilot. Data were not collected from participants given that the objective of the pilot tests was to assess whether learning objectives were achieved for each lesson. Procedures for the pilot tests were approved as exempt by the University of California, Davis Institutional Review Board. Teens CAN started with 13 lessons, however, the first pilot test observations suggested combining two of the nutrition lessons for succinctness. While all learning concepts and objectives were retained, three lesson procedures were modified as the original procedures did not allow for achieving the identified authentic assessments and thus participants were unable to meet the learning objectives. Additionally, youth indicated feeling less engaged during these lessons compared to others. Insufficient time was initially dedicated to developing application activities, resulting in almost all being revised to better suit each lesson concept. Following the second pilot, only additional minor edits to improve clarity throughout the curriculum were required. All participants of the second pilot were able to achieve the learning objectives through acceptable evidence of learning as detailed in Table 2. Further, observations indicated that youth were adequately engaged during the lessons. Results from the informal group interview suggested that youth enjoyed the learner-centered approach of the lessons. The final curriculum contains 12 modules, four within each topic area, that feature experiential and application lessons.