Nutrition Literacy Tailored Interventions May Improve Diet Behaviors in Outpatient Nutrition Clinics

Objectives: Nutrition literacy examines the intersection of nutrition knowledge and skills; however, no evidence shows interventions tailored to nutrition literacy deficits affect diet behaviors. This study exam-ined the effects of nutrition interventions tailored to individual nutrition literacy deficits on improving diet-related behaviors. Methods: Five outpatient clinics were randomized to 2 arms. The nutrition literacy and diet behaviors of patients were assessed before intervention with a dietitian and again 1 month later. Intervention-arm dieti-tians received patient nutrition literacy levels and tailored interventions toward nutrition literacy weak-nesses. Differences in diet behaviors between arms were analyzed using Mann-Whitney U-tests and within-arms using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results: Intervention-arm patients improved 10 of 25 measured diet behaviors; control-arm patients improved 6 behaviors. Similarly, intervention-arm patients reported increased green vegetable consumption from baseline to follow-up (z = 2.00; P = 0.04). Conclusions and Implications: Nutrition interventions tailored toward nutrition literacy deficits may play an important role in improving patient diet behaviors.