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Preschoolers distinguish between healthy and unhealthy snack foods
Author(s) -
SigmanGrant Madeleine,
Byington Teresa,
Lindsay Anne,
Spann Tara,
Black David
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.25.1_supplement.30.2
Subject(s) - nutrition education , snack food , healthy food , cognition , test (biology) , set (abstract data type) , preference , psychology , intervention (counseling) , childhood obesity , developmental psychology , food choice , healthy eating , medicine , obesity , gerontology , overweight , food science , physical therapy , mathematics , physical activity , psychiatry , chemistry , pathology , computer science , biology , paleontology , programming language , statistics , neuroscience
Obesity prevention education should begin during the preschool years (ages 3 to 5 years). Preschoolers have the cognitive ability to begin sorting foods into different groups; although, it is difficult for them to comprehend an ambiguous concept such as ‘healthy and unhealthy foods.’ Preschoolers often think that if a food tastes good the food is ‘good for you’ or healthy. Constructing educational strategies that overcome this lack of conceptualization is essential to building a nutrition education foundation for young children. The 24‐lesson All 4 Kids (A4K) Program uses visualization, repetition and the dichotomous ‘Go’ and ‘Whoa’ food sort to scaffold nutrition information that preschoolers can comprehend. As part of a quasi‐experimental control group design of program impact, 233 preschoolers were tested pre and post program to evaluate: (1) if they could correctly identify 18 snack foods; (2) their preference of nine snacks pairs (healthy or unhealthy); and (3) their ability to identify healthy foods from the snack pairs. At pre‐test, the most frequently recognized food was cookies. At pretest, no differences were noted between intervention (I) and control (C). At post‐test, in terms of preference, significantly more I children (52.2%) selected the healthy snack compared to 34.6% C (p=.008). Additionally, twice as many I children (62.3%) correctly identified the healthy food at post‐test compared to C (31.4%) (p = .001). These findings suggest that use of appropriate teaching strategies for young children can set the foundation for understanding complex nutrition concepts. Funded by FNS Nutrition Education and Evaluation Demonstration Project #0904017.