PROMOTING INCREASED CONSUMPTION OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES IN OLDER ADULTS THROUGH SELF-EFFICACY AND SOCIAL COHESION

The purpose of this scholarly project was to design and offer a nutrition education program on fruit and vegetable consumption to a group of rural adults aged 65 and older. It was hypothesized that the nutrition program would directly motivate older adults to increase dietary consumption of fruits and vegetables. The project utilized the Health Promotion Model as the theoretical framework. To incorporate this project into a quantitative design, the methodological design that was applied is a non-experimental or observational design. This project included a four-week educational program in the Spring of 2023 that provided information on the importance of adequate fruit and vegetable consumption and motivated participants to make dietary changes through nutrition education, recipes, and cooking classes. A pretest-posttest of the nutrition educational program was administered before and after the program to measure the effectiveness of the education on fruit and vegetable consumption, self-efficacy, and social cohesion. Inclusion criteria: males and females aged 65 and over who are U.S. Citizens, members of a rural Midwestern faith-based congregation, and were independent living older adults capable of driving and walking into the educational sessions. Exclusion criteria: males and females aged 65 and older who were non-English speaking, with cognitive impairments, dementia, and/or unstable medical conditions. As a result of the project, an increase of about two-thirds (M=.63, SD=1.002) cups of fruit and almost a half (M=.49, SD=1.00) cup of vegetables was consumed by the participants from the beginning to end of this study. There was also an increase in Mean for all items of Self-Efficacy from before the intervention (M=3.68, SD=.488) to after the intervention (M=4.07, SD=.400). Overall, this scholarly project assisted these 23 participants to increase their fruit and vegetable intake as well as their level of self-efficacy.