The Effects of Nutrition Education on Children Who Avoid to eat Vegetables

채소기피 아동에 대한 영양교육 효과

The present study was designed to observe whether nutritional education on children or mothers of the children who avoid to eat vegetables can improve the preferences for the vegetables of the subjects. The subjects were 45 children who are fourth to sixth grade of primary school in Bibong. They were assigned to one of three groups which are Control, Children Education and Mothers Education groups. Control group was not given any special education, while experimental groups were given nutritional education for 4 weeks. The effects of education was evaluated in the aspects of preference changes for vegetables, nutritional knowledge, attitude and food behavior of the subjects The results are summarized as follows. 1. Preferences to cucumber, lettuce, chinese cabbage and raddish were high in three groups while greenonion, onion, lotus roots and red pepper didn't suit for their taste. 2. Significantly increased scores for the preference to red pepper, pumpkin, Dorajee(root of chinese bell-flower), braken, mushroom was shown only in the children who had nutritional education while the children in the group of Mothers Education improved their preference only cabbage and lotus roots. 3. Nutritional knowledge of the children in Children Education group has improved significantly(p<0.05). While there was no significant difference between control and Mothers Education group. 4. When scores for food habit of mother and children were estimated, there was no significant difference among three groups. However, score of food habit in children was higher than that of mothers. 5. Food habit and nutrition knowledge of mother were not well corelated with dietary attitude and behavior of their children. These results indicate that the program of nutrition education in the present study can improve the food choice of children for vegetable and correct one-sided food habit. The program applied in this study would serve a kind of model for the dietetic teachers to guide the children who mainly dislikes vegetables.