Evaluation of the Cancer Council NSW Eat It To Beat It Healthy Lunch Box Sessions: A short intervention to promote the intake of fruit and vegetables among families of primary school children in NSW Australia.

ISSUE ADDRESSED: Children and adults in Australia are not eating the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. Our objective was to assess the effectiveness of a health promotion intervention to improve fruit and vegetable intake among primary school children and their families in NSW. METHODS: The Cancer Council New South Wales Healthy Lunch Box sessions were a 25-minute session delivered to parents of primary school-aged children. The sessions provided information and resources about fruit and vegetables and healthy school lunch boxes. The evaluation is a quantitative uncontrolled pre-post design. Data were collected using three questionnaires, pre-intervention, 1 week post-intervention and 6 months post-intervention. RESULTS: A total of 204 parents completed all three evaluation questionnaires to 6 months. Knowledge of recommended intakes and serving sizes of fruit and vegetables improved significantly after the intervention. There was an increase in parents reporting packing vegetables (often/always) in the child's lunch box at 1 week (47%) and 6 months post-intervention (40%) compared to pre-intervention (32%). The proportion of parents reporting that they were confident in packing a healthy lunch box increased from 45% pre-intervention to 62% after the intervention. CONCLUSION: The Healthy Lunch Box sessions were effective in improving parental knowledge and practices related to fruit and vegetables and parental confidence with packing a healthy lunch box. SO WHAT?: This short intervention could be a useful component of a portfolio of interventions to support parents with knowledge and resources to pack a healthy lunch box for their children.

Increased exposure to community-based education and 'below the line' social marketing results in increased fruit and vegetable consumption.

OBJECTIVE: To determine if localised programmes that are successful in engaging the community can add value to larger fruit and vegetable mass-media campaigns by evaluating the results of the Eat It To Beat It programme. DESIGN: The Eat It To Beat It programme is a multi-strategy intervention that uses community-based education and 'below the line' social marketing to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in parents. This programme was evaluated by a controlled before-and-after study with repeat cross-sectional data collected via computer-assisted telephone interviews with 1403 parents before the intervention (2008) and 1401 following intervention delivery (2011). SETTING: The intervention area was the Hunter region and the control area was the New England region of New South Wales, Australia. SUBJECTS: Parents of primary school-aged children (Kindergarten to Year 6). RESULTS: The programme achieved improvements in knowledge of recommended intakes for fruit and vegetables and some positive changes in knowledge of serving size for vegetables. Exposure to the programme resulted in a net increase of 0.5 servings of fruit and vegetables daily for those who recalled the programme compared with those who did not (P = 0.004). Increased intake of fruit and vegetables was significantly associated with increasing exposure to programme strategies. CONCLUSIONS: The Eat It To Beat It programme demonstrates that an increase in consumption of fruit and vegetables can be achieved by programmes that build on the successes of larger mass-media and social-marketing campaigns.This suggests that funding for localised, community-based programmes should be increased.

The efficacy of a brief, peer-led nutrition education intervention in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption: a wait-list, community-based randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of the present research was to test the efficacy of Fruit & Veg $ense sessions in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. DESIGN: A wait-list randomised controlled trial was conducted (n 292). Intervention participants attended a Fruit & Veg $ense session and received newsletters at weeks 2 and 5 after attending the session. All participants completed an FFQ and a questionnaire measuring knowledge, attitudes, barriers and stage of change for fruit and vegetable consumption at baseline and 6 weeks. SETTING: Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia. SUBJECTS: Two hundred and ninety-two parents with children of primary school age. RESULTS: The intervention group significantly increased its mean consumption of fruit and vegetables by 0·62 servings compared with 0·11 in the control group (difference of 0·51, P = 0·001). Compared with the control group, there were significant increases in intervention participants' knowledge of daily recommended servings (for fruit and vegetables) and serving size (for vegetables), improvement in stage of change for vegetable consumption and a decrease in the number of perceived barriers to fruit and vegetable consumption. CONCLUSIONS: Fruit & Veg $ense is efficacious in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption among parents of primary-school children. The study adds significantly to the limited evidence regarding fruit and vegetable interventions and the feasibility of engaging peer educators to deliver community education sessions. A broader implementation trial to test the effectiveness of Fruit & Veg $ense is recommended.