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Abstract
Federal nutrition education programs, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) and the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), conduct recipe demonstrations as a central component of their curricula to limited resource audiences. These recipe demonstrations aim to influence eating behaviors among participants and promote healthy dietary habits. To maximize recipe demonstration impact, the recipes selected for direct education must be seen as highly acceptable in terms of taste, preparation, accessibility in cooking equipment, and time required. However, little is known regarding acceptability of such recipes among program participants, and there is no standard method of determining which recipes maximize impact. Sensory evaluation, stemming from the field of sensory science, comes to mind as a viable option, but formal evaluation of recipes in this context remains underutilized. As such, this research investigated the application of sensory evaluation methodology for University of Georgia EFNEP and SNAP-Ed recipe offerings and examined factors of recipe acceptability by two stakeholder groups: program participants and peer educators of these programs. This work comprised of three studies that focused on: 1) the use of sensory evaluation to received feedback on new recipes from UGA SNAP-Ed participants, 2) UGA EFNEP and SNAP-Ed peer educator sensory and preparation perspectives regarding Food Talk program recipes, and 3) peer educator sensory, preparation, and recipe demonstration perspectives regarding recipes modified using the results of the first study. In addition, a methodology was created to guide future sensory evaluation efforts in the community setting. The studies demonstrated that sensory evaluation provided relevant information on recipe acceptability not previously collected by recipe writers for Federal nutrition education programs. Results also showed that peer educators carried a unique perspective about recipe offerings based on their in-depth knowledge of program participants, and these peer educators should be leveraged when testing among program participants is not possible or when a potential recipe needs prompt feedback. It can be concluded that recipe development efforts benefit from formal participant or peer educator input on sensory liking attributes (e.g., tastes, flavor, texture, etc.) and factors of preparation to guide the final recipes used in curricula.