Sandhills Central Community Kitchen Evaluation: Using the Veggie Meter

This clinical trial will evaluate the development, implementation, and impact of a central kitchen preparing and serving meals to child care centers in rural Harnett County, North Carolina. The goals of the kitchen are to improve meal quality, reduce workload on child care providers, create a sustainable business model, and provide a source of community economic development. Our evaluation of the Sandhills Central Community Kitchen is important to better understand how this model can be replicated to serve rural communities. We will recruit 20 child care centers (10 intervention and 10 as a control group); we estimate that each child care center will serve 40 children. We will collect baseline data at the beginning of the project from all 20 centers, and will repeat data collection at the end of the project to assess changes. Data will be collected through parent surveys, surveys and interviews with child care center directors, surveys and focus groups with teachers, interviews with the church pastor and community leaders where the kitchen is based, surveys of kitchen staff, nutritional analysis of menu data, collection and analysis of food costs, and through use of the "Veggie Meter" (a non-invasive instrument that assesses changes in intake of fruits and vegetables by measuring skin carotenoids) with child care center children and staff. Our goal is to document the impacts of central kitchens in terms of nutritional and economic benefits in order to create a replicable model.

Skin carotenoid status (SCS) will be used to measure F&V intake among pre-schoolers. Carotenoids, the colorful phytonutrients found in vegetables are correlated with F&V intake. A higher carotenoid level is correlated with higher F&V intake; conversely lower carotenoid levels are associated with lower F&V intake over the past month. To measure carotenoid level, researchers will use the Veggie Meter®. The Veggie Meter is a small, portable, non-invasive device that assesses SCS via pressure-mediated reflection spectroscopy. This is more accurate than self-reported diet among children.