PURPOSE: Assess the effectiveness of the integration of vegetable demonstration videos and tasting experiences into a college nutrition course to influence students' readiness to change vegetable intake, self-efficacy for vegetable preparation, and usual vegetable intake. DESIGN: Quasiexperimental, preintervention-postintervention comparisons. SETTING: College nutrition course. SUBJECTS: Of the 376 students enrolled in the course, 186 completed the online assessments (145 female, 41 male; mean age, 20 years). INTERVENTION: Participants viewed online vegetable preparation videos and participated in vegetable tasting experiences that featured four target vegetables, one vegetable each month for 4 months. MEASURES: Preintervention and postintervention online surveys determined usual vegetable intake, readiness to change vegetable consumption, and self-efficacy of vegetable preparation. ANALYSIS: Chi-square distribution and paired sample t-tests were used to examine differences preintervention and postintervention. RESULTS: Stage of readiness to change vegetable intake shifted from contemplation toward preparation (p < .001). Self-efficacy of vegetable preparation increased and postintervention self-efficacy was associated with total and target vegetable consumption (p = .001 and p = .005, respectively). The average intake of asparagus, one of four target vegetables, increased (p = .016); similar changes were not observed for target or total vegetable consumption. CONCLUSION: Online vegetable demonstration videos may be an effective and cost-efficient intervention for increasing self-efficacy of vegetable preparation and readiness to increase vegetable consumption among college students. More research is needed to determine long-term effects on vegetable consumption.
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Brown et al. (2011) studied this question.