Healthier Aging With Media & Nutrition (HAMN): Developing a Media Literacy-Based, Nutrition Program for the Aging Population

Christopher Kaiser

doi:10.7273/000005221

There are more than 54 million Americans older than 65 years and those trends have continued to rise as the Baby Boomer group celebrates their 65th birthday. Some estimates conclude that those in that age group with chronic diseases contribute to 75% of health care spending. Proper nutrition for the elderly is important because inadequate nutrition can lead to fragility, poor mood, inactivity, and decreased immunity. Overweight or obese individuals have a higher risk of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Media literacy techniques can be used as an intervention strategy to prevent negative health behaviors and to promote healthy ones by imparting knowledge and changing attitudes. Media literacy has demonstrated the potential to reduce the impact of marketing techniques that affect food purchases and preferences, nutrition knowledge and claims, and persuasive techniques used to promote unhealthy, sugary, high-fat foods. There are many nutrition programs for the aging that focus on preventing malnutrition, promoting physical activity, and fostering health diets in the United States. However, none of these programs focus on the effects of food and drink advertisements, nor do any teach any skills or techniques to analyze and evaluate the ads with which the aging population interacts. The present study developed Heathier Aging with Media & Nutrition (HAMN) in response for a need of media literacy-based, nutrition program for aging adults and focuses on the media’s role in food advertising and nutrition information. Therefore, the program seeks to provide aging adults with the tools to critically analyze food advertisements, improve decision making about healthy dietary choices and to effect positive dietary behaviors. This study conducted a pretest, posttest, delayed-posttest experiment with both with random assignment of participants (N = 247) into either an experimental or control group. A three-day, online curriculum was developed for each group. Results reveal that those in the HAMN experimental group had significantly lower perceived desirability, perceived realism, and wishful identification scores than the control group. Results also reveal that those in the experimental group had significantly higher scores of critical thinking, skepticism, self-efficacy and expectancies than the control group. Those in the experimental group had significantly higher nutrition-related attitudes and knowledge, attitudes toward food, and serving size knowledge. In addition, the experimental group consumed statistically more vegetables and significantly less snacks, chips and soda. These findings reveal significantly consistent results for the message interpretation model (MIP) when applied to an aging participant population; a population previously not investigated by the MIP. The only nonsignificant results were the difference between groups for the consumption of fruits and grains, which could indicate that utilizing media literacy techniques can more easily change attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about food and drink advertisements, but might not affect all food consumption behaviors by employing a three-day intervention. Results from HAMN indicate that the aging American population can learn and establish skills from a media-literacy based, nutrition program to help analyze food and drink advertisements to make healthier dietary decisions. Furthermore, results show that this program can build new nutrition-related attitudes and knowledge and bolster existing knowledge, while affecting vegetable and snack consumption. The implications from this study could inform future research on the development of nutrition programs for the aging population, while incorporating media literacy techniques to combat the potential negative effects of food and drink advertisements. These results could be expanded to a traditional curriculum to occur over a longer period of time and to incorporate more applied activities to bolster behavior change, such as healthy cooking classes, nutrition facts label activities, and food shopping days. The HAMN project could also be developed for other adults to establish healthier food and drink habits, attitudes, and knowledge as they age to promote healthier, longer lives and to develop healthier relationships with food and drinks.

Healthier Aging With Media & Nutrition (HAMN): Developing a Media Literacy-Based, Nutrition Program for the Aging Population

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