Background: Eating habits are affected by different abilities, skills and social determinants. Food Literacy (FL) encompasses a range of competencies, including skills, capacity, and self-efficacy, so as to enable optimal nutrition. FL, therefor, is the capability to make healthy food choices in different contexts, settings and situations. Gamification enables the transmission of educational material in an enjoyable manner by lay leaders. This program seeks to improve nutrition behaviors in disadvantaged communities via a train-the-trainers program, providing lay leaders with the tools necessary to disseminate FL skills in their community, using game-based tools. The program suggests a FL model including four dimensions: preparation skills, organization, psycho-social factors, and nutrition knowledge, and includes factors such as cultural contexts, recipe modification and budgeting skills.   

Objectives: To improve nutrition behaviors and raise the level of FL in women from disadvantaged communities via a train-the-trainers program.

Methods: Community lay leaders underwent training in a program that enabled them to effectively disseminate FL skills through engaging visual and game-based tools. Baseline and follow up data included participants' eating habits and a FL scale, based on an existing scale that has been modified for this program.

Results: The program was piloted in a group of lay leaders in Jerusalem. Post program, participants' FL level increased significantly (p<0.05).  Additionally, lay leaders reported significantly higher levels of confidence in their ability to find information about nutrition (p<0.05), and to implement the FL program in their community (p<0.001). The leaders have started facilitating FL groups, each in their own community.

Conclusion: This pilot program using gamification was able to show improvement in multiple dimensions of food literacy. Preliminary data suggests that a FL train-the-trainers program can increase FL levels, with the potential of improving eating habits within the community. Nutrition interventions should address multiple components of food literacy rather than solely information about what should and should not be eaten.