Examination of an Online Cooking Education Program to Improve Shopping Skills, Attitudes toward Cooking, and Cooking Confidence among WIC Participants.

The present study examined if adapting the Cooking Matters (CM) curriculum to be used in an online format would improve participants' shopping skills, attitudes toward cooking, and feelings of cooking confidence, similar to the traditionally offered method, which is conducted in person. Results from factor analyses indicated that the online CM program demonstrated construct and content reliability compared to in-person (Cronbach's α ≥ 0.70). Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a decrease in shopping skills overall (F = 5.91; p ≤ 0.05), consistent across age groups (F = 3.2; p ≤ 0.05) and food security status (F = 7.48; p < 0.01), with larger impacts on the food insecure (FI). Positive cooking attitudes increased with income (F = 2.86; p ≤ 0.05), especially among the <$20,000 and $30-39,000 income brackets. Cooking confidence increased post-intervention (F = 27.2, p < 0.001), with an interaction effect for food security status (F = 7.45; p ≤ 0.01), with greater improvement for households with food insecurity. These findings provide evidence to program and policymakers that virtual nutrition and cooking education services for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) should continue to be supported beyond the pandemic as they reduce barriers to receiving program benefits, nutrition education, and may lead to reductions in household food insecurity.

Using critical race theory to reframe mentor training: theoretical considerations regarding the ecological systems of mentorship.

This article offers a theoretical and critical analysis of race-dysconscious mentorship involving students of color and white faculty. Inspired by ecological systems theory, critical race theory, and the NIH-funded program, Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity: Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in Education and Research, our analysis considers the ecosystems that promote student pushout and hinder diversification of the scientific workforce, which call for "critical" alternatives to traditional research mentorship. We first examine the historical, social-political, institutional, interpersonal, and intrapsychic ecosystems of traditional mentor-protégé relationships. Two areas are reviewed: (a) "diversity" as it operates in universities and research laboratories and (b) the discursive properties of a dysconscious dialog that rationalizes modern racism. Next, we connect the five ecosystems of mentorship by integrating literature on critical history, white consciousness, the interpersonal context of mentoring, and mentor-protégé phenomenology. Our analysis demonstrates how the racialized lives of members involved in a mentoring relationship are situated within racist macro-level ecological systems wherein intrapsychic and interpersonal actions and discourses unfold. The development of race-consciousness and anti-racist faculty mentor training programs is also discussed.