ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets
This article is part of the Research TopicRethinking Wild Edibles at the Nexus of Human and Planetary HealthView all articles
Foraging, Perennial Vegetables, and Nutritional Resilience in a Farmworker Community: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Comparing Nutrition Functional Diversity and the Healthy Eating Index
Provisionally accepted
- 1Syracuse City School District, Syracuse, United States
- 2Syracuse University, Syracuse, United States
- 3Cultivate Abundance, Fort Myers, FL, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Farmworker communities face significant food access barriers including economic constraints, immigration enforcement threats, and geographic isolation from retail sources. The objective of this study was to compare home garden agrobiodiversity, food access patterns, and dietary quality among farmworker households in Immokalee, Florida, considering foraging practices and perennial vegetable use as nutrition resilience strategies. We employed mixed methods including participatory ranking activities (n=16) and interviews with dietary recalls and garden mapping (n=58), conducted in Spanish and Habitual Kreyòl In the interview portion, Spanish speakers that also spoke an indigenous language were differentiated. Nutrition Functional Diversity (NFD) scores quantified nutritional contributions of diverse food sources, while Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2015) scores assessed diet quality. As a cross-sectional study it was not temporal and limited in describing any causal relationships. Participants demonstrated diverse procurement strategies: gardening (67%), foraging (36%), and food pantry use. Mean HEI score was 61.7±12.3, comparable to US averages. NFD scores revealed difficult-to-access plants provided 31.3% of potential nutritional diversity, while pantry-sourced plants provided 30.1%. Foraging contributed vitamin A (180-200% RDA), calcium (40-60% RDA), and vitamin K. Language significantly affected HEI scores (F=3.86, p=0.03), with Spanish speakers scoring higher than Haitian Kreyòl speakers. No correlation existed between NFD and HEI scores (R²=0.006), suggesting these metrics capture distinct food security dimensions. Farmworker communities employ sophisticated nutrition resilience strategies that may not align with conventional dietary quality measures. The NFD-HEI disconnect highlights limitations in applying standardized dietary guidelines across culturally diverse populations. Foraging and perennial vegetable use represent important but potentially stigmatized food access strategies. Nutrition interventions should recognize and support existing community food knowledge rather than imposing top-down recommendations. Future research should address composition data gaps for culturally important foods and develop culturally responsive nutrition assessment tools.
Keywords: Cultural food practices, Dietary quality, farmworkers, Food security, foraging, nutrition functional diversity, nutrition resilience, Perennial vegetables
Received: 13 Dec 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Garofano, Voss and Burnette. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Rebecca Garofano
Margaret Athena Voss
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.