UK researchers encourage college students to eat healthy with dorm room recipes

Video via the YouTube channel of Aurora Occa.
 

Attending college brings on a lot of change for students, including how they eat. Dining halls are the norm, but today college students have access to food delivery apps, 24-hour diners and, sometimes, kitchens in their residence halls. Researchers at the University of Kentucky have discovered students can be encouraged to prepare their own meals when they interact with nutrition content on social media.

Lauren Batey, program coordinator for the WiN-WiN Program in the Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition at the University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment and doctoral student in the UK College of Communication and Information, and Aurora Occa, Ph.D., associate professor in the UK College of Communication and Information, became interested in why recipe videos are widely popular on social media. In learning about the audience of cooking videos, they wanted to know how that content could be used to encourage students to make healthier diet choices.

“With nutrition, we are always trying to meet people where they are,” Batey said. “In the case of students, social media is where they are. As nutrition experts, we need to make ourselves more visible.”

In their research, Batey and Occa formatted the content to mirror Instagram reels and carousel-style posts. This allowed them to test whether short-form videos (reels) or step-by-step photo sequences with instructions (carousels) motivated viewers to attempt that recipe. Batey and Occa created content centered around two different recipes that can be made in most college dorm rooms: no-bake granola energy bites and a barbecue chicken baked sweet potato.

The theory of planned behavior guided the two researchers as they developed the video and photo content. That theory posits that human behavior is shaped by three elements: attitude toward the behavior, perceived social pressure and confidence in one’s ability to cook healthily.

Batey said the study wasn’t just about seeing whether students would cook a recipe. Instead, the researchers wanted to understand how recipe-style social media posts influence college students’ attitudes toward healthy cooking, their confidence in doing it and their intentions to make nutritious meals. They also looked at the format (carousel-style posts versus short videos), how often the message was shown (once versus three times), and how mentally demanding or visually informative the content felt made a difference in how students responded.

“After being exposed to our recipes, we found that a little over 19% of students made the energy bites and around 11% made the baked potato,” Occa said. “We were pleasantly surprised, especially since there’s very limited research showing whether social media recipe posts actually influence real-world behavior. There isn’t much existing data in this area, so seeing students follow through and cook the recipes was encouraging.”

Occa and Batey found that the format (reel versus carousel) was not as relevant to the response as they anticipated. Nor was the “dose,” i.e. how many times a user saw that content. They learned that a user viewing a well-made piece of recipe content on social media — even one time — leaves an impact.

“Communication is fundamental to nutrition but often overlooked,” Occa said. “There is so much misinformation on social media, so our goal now is to learn how we can move the needle. If we can encourage a student to cook a meal, we can also find ways to spread information about a healthy lifestyle that make an impact.”

Batey and Occa’s work is one of many examples of interdisciplinary education at UK. Learn more about the Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition and the Department of Communication.