Development and Performance Evaluation of Education Program to increase Children's Preference for Vegetables through Five Senses

This study developed a vegetable preference increase program that can be applied at the Center for Children's Foodservice Management (CCFM) for children in child-care facilities and kindergarten and the training performance was evaluated by 192 5-year old children. Teachers considered 'disliked food' ($3.23{\pm}0.85/out$ of 5) as the most serious nutritional problem and typical disliked food was 'vegetables' (54.2%). Based on this finding, to increase the preference for vegetables, a five-phase education program was developed. In this program, each phase was composed of activities to increase children's interest in vegetables by using each sense out of the five senses. Center dieticians had visited and conducted the program in 12 facilities. By using an illustration assessment tool, the training performance was evaluated by comparing the children's knowledge level and their preference changes in vegetables. Consequently, as examined by 10 questions on the knowledge of vegetables, trained children's (in total 192) knowledge of vegetables had considerably increased (p<0.01, p<0.001), and their preference for 15 out of the 16 vegetables, except for carrots, also showed a considerable preference increase after the training (p<0.01, p<0.001). Therefore, this program is considered to have contributed to reducing disliked vegetable eating behaviors.

유아 대상의 오감을 활용한 채소 선호도 증진 프로그램의 개발 및 효과 평가