JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Childhood overweight and obesity are major health challenges in the US. One of the recommendations to combat obesity is to maintain a healthy diet, which is often best supported by eating home cooked meals to control cooking methods, ingredients, and portions. Diet control through home cooking is challenged due to the decline of culinary skills in the population and a paucity of effective culinary nutrition education programs (CNE). Providing technology-enabled CNE (CNE-tech) to overweight and obese adolescents can equip them with life skills that can assist them in the future. Such skills can facilitate saving money, eating healthier, and creating social environments. In addition, CNE builds cooking confidence and food literacy that in turn can build adolescent self-efficacy, particularly towards managing their health behaviors.

Objective:

In this study, we aim to inform functionalities, design requirements, and the context of use for CNE-tech that could enhance overweight and obese adolescents’ healthy food literacy, cooking confidence, and general self-efficacy regarding self-management to ultimately, promote healthy lifestyle management.

Methods:

The design science study was completed in two distinct phases engaging overweight and obese adolescents, parents of overweight and obese adolescents, and providers that treat adolescents with these conditions. Phase 2, our primary source of data, involved user-centered design methods including: a) early stage prototype usability analysis, b) semi-structured interviews with 70 overweight or obese adolescents engaged in a healthy behavior program and c) semi-structured interviews with 10 healthcare providers. Data was analyzed using a constant comparison method to identify functionalities, design requirements, and inform the context of use of CNE-tech.

Results:

Data revealed specific desired functionalities for the CNE-tech related to cooking skill building, populated healthy recipes database, suggesting healthy alternatives, supports to construct a healthy plate, and the ability to share healthy recipes and cooking accomplishments. Moreover, adolescents provided design requirements pertaining to presentation (e.g., vivid colors, semi-realistic images, cooking sounds), use of multimedia, and gaming. Data further revealed contextual factors, such as shared experiences with family members and enhanced continued use.

Conclusions:

We demonstrate the potentiality of creating CNE-tech that could effectively lead to better self-care and induce sustainable behavioral change as it facilitates skill building, self-efficacy, and a pathway that enables overweight and obese adolescents to influence cooking habits in their family home and future dwellings. Our CNE-tech proposed solution aligns with the goals of overweight and obese adolescents and also reflects existing theories about behavioral change.