Conclusions
chronic disease
CHRONIC DISEASE
In this pilot randomized controlled trial that provided food pantry clients with 14-days of nutritious meal kits (Group 1) or no-prep meals (Group 2) we found that hedonic liking for study meals was high and there were high intervention satisfaction ratings for both nutrition interventions. However, there was a between-within interaction on hedonic liking, such that participants that received meal kits had an increase in hedonic liking of study meals from baseline to follow-up, while participants that received no-prep meals had a slight decrease in hedonic liking. Similarly, participants in the meal kit group had higher intervention satisfaction ratings than participants in the no-prep group at follow-up.Two prior studies have shown that people may enjoy healthy food more when self-prepared based on the hypothesis that exerting effort to prepare a meal increases the subjective value of the meal [There were some indications that, compared to meal kits, providing no-prep meals as chronic disease prevention and chronic disease management may not be as effective and desirable for this food pantry population (e.g., higher rates of dropout in the no-prep group, lower intervention satisfaction in the no-prep group, higher proportion of no-prep participants found dinners too small). Larger and longer studies are needed before that conclusion can be drawn given that hedonic liking and satisfaction ratings were generally favorable. Furthermore, it is possible that no-prep meals may have additional advantages for certain subsets of pantry populations, such as those with functional limitations or lack of kitchen space and equipment.There were no between group differences or between-within interactions on perceived diet quality or food security that would suggest one approach was more effective than the other over the study period. There were large within group effects, showing that participants in both groups had significant improvements in food security and perceived diet quality over the study period. Follow-up studies are needed to see if improvements can be sustained over longer periods of time. Our preliminary hypotheses were that no-prep meals would be more effective at improving intervention satisfaction, diet quality, and food security. In this pilot study we did not find evidence supporting these hypotheses, however, given the small sample size, Type 2 error is possible.