What we eat has a profound impact on our health. Eating more fruits and vegetables is linked to lower risk of a host of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But that doesn’t mean eating healthy is always easy. Fresh produce can be difficult to afford or hard to find. And in popular culture, eating healthy is often associated with self-deprivation: giving up “bad” (and delicious) foods in favor of virtuously bland kale leaves and protein shakes.
Madeleine French, MS, RDN, an instructor in nutrition and integrative physiology in the University of Utah College of Health, wants to demolish the idea of nutrition as tasteless and inaccessible. “Nutrition is about including everything in moderation,” French says. “That’s why I like community nutrition, because I can show people that foods like tacos and curries can be super nutritious.”
Over the course of two years, French and a team of Spanish language interpreters and nutrition graduate students taught more than 100 nutrition classes in locations around Salt Lake County to introduce participants to cooking that’s healthy, economical, culturally relevant, and, of course, delicious. The results of the intervention published in Nutrients in February 2024.
Breaking down barriers
This nutrition education program, called Journey to Health, hinged on collaboration with the Wellness Bus, the University of Utah Center for Community Nutrition, and the Utah Food Bank. The Wellness Bus is a mobile health unit that offers free screenings for health indicators like cholesterol and blood sugar, as well as one-on-one health coaching. With Journey to Health, the team wanted to help the bus expand its services and reach new community members.
“It started out as little food demos,” French says. “Dietitians would make smoothies and snacks outside the Wellness Bus and talk to clients about their nutritional value. People would be like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’” Seeing that initial interest, French and Alex Hernandez, MS, RDN, program manager for the Wellness Bus, started designing classes built around culinary demonstrations as graduate students in nutrition. The two continued to work on the program together after they graduated and were hired as dietitians at the U.
Their curriculum included recipes like corn-and-bean salsa and cucumber-mint agua fresca to show how healthy eating could fit into participants’ cultural cuisines. More than half of people who participated in the program were Hispanic or Latinx, and the team wanted to ensure that Journey to Health’s recipes would work well with participants’ existing cooking styles. “Healthy eating should include your cultural foods and your favorite foods,” French says. “It’s important that we include variety and practice moderation, but all food fits in a healthy diet, and it’s important to honor that.”
The Journey to Health program also aimed to reduce the economic barriers that limit many people’s access to healthy ingredients. Most Journey to Health activities included incentives that helped people get healthy food, from samples of the culinary demonstrations to grocery store gift cards.
The fruits of their labors
Journey to Health’s practical, evidence-based design appears to have paid off. People who participated in the program transitioned to eating more fruit, drinking less sugar-sweetened beverages, and saw significant improvements to their blood pressure, body mass index, and triglycerides (levels of fat in the blood). Participants who started the program with high total or LDL cholesterol also tended to reduce their cholesterol to healthier levels.
People who chose to participate in the program may have already been highly motivated to adopt healthier behaviors, but French says the progress that participants made is remarkable. “To see these improvements despite the numerous barriers folks face when trying to make healthy choices today is extremely impressive,” she says.
While Journey to Health is on pause for now, anyone can still visit the Wellness Bus for free biometric screenings and health coaching. French says that the program has also inspired the development of another student-led nutrition initiative that’s still in the works. One of the most common pieces of feedback from Journey to Health participants was the desire for actual hands-on cooking classes. The next evolution of the project will be a culinary medicine course that includes more time in the kitchen for participants to develop skills.
One thing French loves about her work is being able to show people that eating healthy doesn’t have to be a hardship. “Nutrition can be additive and enjoyable,” she says. “I really appreciate being able to go into a space and challenge people’s perception of a healthy diet.”
