Nutrition Education: Linking Research, Theory, and Practice

Nutrition education is reimagined through a clear six-step DESIGN process that translates research into actionable plans for changing dietary behaviors. The guide offers detailed examples, updated workbooks, and visual diagrams to help professionals deliver engaging programs across diverse platforms.

Nutrition Education: Linking Research, Theory, and Practice is a practical and straightforward theory- and research-based guide for how to create, implement, and evaluate nutrition education that can change dietary behavior to improve the health of people and the planet. Built around the six-step DESIGN process for creating nutrition educational plans to be delivered to groups in person or indirectly through various physical and digital media along with plans for creating activities to provide environmental supports, this text also provides detailed nuts and bolts guidance to help students deliver these plans effectively through various media to a range of audiences or populations. This text is divided into four parts that build on each other:•Part I explains why nutrition education is critical for a healthy future and describes the key four elements of success for effective nutrition education and their theory and research base. •Part II presents the six steps of the Nutrition Education DESIGN Procedure-a process for designing nutrition education, translating theory into concrete objectives and strategies that can be practically implemented. •Part III details how to effectively deliver nutrition education across various groups and various channels using educational and communication principles and how to become involved in the nutrition education profession. •Part IV provides the DESIGN Procedure Workbooks for educational plans and an expanded Case Study, which has been updated to reflect the changes in the text. The streamlined Fifth Edition has been reorganized and reduced from 18 chapters to 15 chapters to better align with a typical semester long course. It also includes expanded examples of nutrition education for four hypothetical individuals, who are introduced in Chapter 1 and continued in lessons throughout the text. New diagrams in Part 1 show how the core disciplines of food and nutrition science, psychology, education, communication, as well the socio-ecological framework is integrated into nutrition education. This integration is further illustrated in Part II during the DESIGN Procedure.