Giving Healthy Meal Kits and Cooking Lessons to Rural Families With Food Insecurity.

Food and Families: A Pilot Study of the Acceptability, Feasibility, and Mental Health Effects of a Meal Kit Intervention in Rural, Low-Income Families

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if providing healthy meal kits to food insecure families can help lessen the social and emotional impacts of food insecurity on kids and their caregivers in rural Maine. The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Is receiving healthy meal kits delivered to homes feasible and acceptable to rural Maine families?
2. Does receiving meal kits (along with an app to help learn how to cook the food) improve food insecurity and diet quality in rural Maine families?
3. Does receiving meal kits (along with an app to help learn how to cook the food) improve family function in rural Maine families? We will look at caregivers' stress, family conflict, household chaos, and child emotional-behavioral symptoms.

Participants will:

1. Recieve and prepare a dietitian-designed meal kit with 10 meals per week for 4 weeks.
2. Receive free culinary medicine education via an app that they will continue to have access to after the study ends.
3. Complete a 1-1.5 hour virtual visit at the beginning of and end of the study.

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18 years of age or older.
• Legal caregiver for a child between the ages of 6-12 with whom they live at least 75% of the time.
• Reside in rural county in Maine as designated by the Health Resources and Services Administration.
• Endorse food insufficiency within the past month on their screening questionnaire.
• Able to speak and read in English.
• Stable address with the ability to receive packages

Exclusion Criteria:

• Inadequate access (<5 days/week) to a kitchen with refrigeration and heating elements to prepare meals.
• Food-restrictive diet (i.e., veganism, gluten-free, dialysis-dependent, severe heart failure).
• A household member with any anaphylactic food allergy.
• No access to a smartphone with texting capabilities.