The Analysis of Effect an Nutrition Education of Elementary School Children, Inchon

Lee, Youn Ju; Kim, Gyoung Mi; Chang, Kyung Ja

Abstract

"Food service management without nutrition education in school foodservice is hardly to improve nutritional status of school children. Therefore, this study was attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of nutrition education. The nutrition education was done for 82 5th grade children of 2 elementary school in Incheon. It has been performed for two month from Sep. 6 to Nov. 11, 1999. Also, to evaluate the effects of nutrition education, subjects were taken pretest for food habit, attitude, nutrition knowledge, and dietary intake through the questionnaires. The statistical analysis of data was completed using SPSS program. The results were summarized as follows : 1) The average height and weight for subjects are 141cm and 34.4kg. Most of the subjects had 2 siblings. 83.8% of the subjects has never been taken nutrition education. Otherwise, 85.2% of the subjects responded that they need a nutrition education. 2) For the food habit test results, the posttest mean scores increased. Food habit on vegetables showed significant difference between pretest and posttest(p<0.05). 3) The attitude test did not show the significant difference between pretest and posttest. 4) For the nutrition knowledge test result, the pre and posttest means were 47.59 and 57.12 respectively(p<0.001). 5) The correlations of food habit, attitude, and nutrition knowledge was positive relationship between food habit and attitude in the pre and posttest. 6) Intake frequency of foods increased for the most foods except meat, egg, milk, and drink as compaired pretest with posttest. Cereal, fish, and oil intake was significantly increased. 7) The intakes of most nutrients were increased, among which carbohydrate, fiber, calcium, and vitamin C intakes significantly different after education. The education period of this study was too short to improve their eating behavior and food choice and may need a long-term education and development of materials for nutrition education. "