Sustainable Diets: Understanding Nutrition Educator Perceptions

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

It is unknown how nutritionists incorporate information on sustainable diets (SD) while teaching about food choices. The purpose of this study was to explore current thoughts and knowledge of SD in nutrition educators. Focus group interviews were conducted to obtain perceptions of SD among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education Program and Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program nutritionists as well as a variety of academic and research focused nutrition educators (n=11). Open‐ended questions were developed on the topics of: importance of SD to them and teaching SD to their audiences as nutritionists, tools needed for teaching SD, barriers to practicing or teaching SD, fitting SD into the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, thoughts on SD and local agriculture, and cultural influences that need to be accounted for in teaching SD. The data were coded, and then categorized. Results showed four overarching themes: (1) potential for improved health of people following a SD, (2) affordability and accessibility issues of following a SD for the general population (i.e. costs and availability of fresh fruits and vegetables), (3) identifying culture as highly influential in accepting and practicing a SD (e.g. fitting sustainable food choices, such as limiting animal products, into a certain culture), and (4) need for nutrition educators to be trained on SD topics to be better informed and able to teach the topic to their audiences. The results have provided insights into the thoughts of nutrition educators and how they understand SD.