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Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents

In NSW, Australia, the views of primary-school aged children and their parents in regard to the importance of nutrition education at school are unclear. The aim of the current study was to explore children’s knowledge of nutrition and eating habits and to identify gaps that future school nutrition e...

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Autores principales: de Vlieger, Nienke, van Rossum, Jolien, Riley, Nicholas, Miller, Andrew, Collins, Clare, Bucher, Tamara
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7231028/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32230736
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children7040024
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author de Vlieger, Nienke
van Rossum, Jolien
Riley, Nicholas
Miller, Andrew
Collins, Clare
Bucher, Tamara
author_facet de Vlieger, Nienke
van Rossum, Jolien
Riley, Nicholas
Miller, Andrew
Collins, Clare
Bucher, Tamara
author_sort de Vlieger, Nienke
collection PubMed
description In NSW, Australia, the views of primary-school aged children and their parents in regard to the importance of nutrition education at school are unclear. The aim of the current study was to explore children’s knowledge of nutrition and eating habits and to identify gaps that future school nutrition education programs could target. Students aged 9 to 12 years and their parents (n = 21 dyads) were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews, complete a nutrition knowledge questionnaire, and perform a “healthy-unhealthy” food sorting task in a University food laboratory. Among the children, nutrition knowledge scores concerning “serves & portions” of common foods were lowest, identifying a gap in knowledge related to portion size. All children categorized fruits, vegetables, cola, and water correctly as “healthy” or “unhealthy” in the sorting task, but not for the sausage and muesli bar, suggesting that further support categorising processed foods may be needed. The interviews indicated that parents do actively try to teach their children about nutrition, although they reported feeling uncertain about their own level of nutrition knowledge. Children and parents indicated that there is very little nutrition education in school and more is needed. This research could be used to inform future curriculum components related to nutrition education for primary school children.
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spelling pubmed-72310282020-05-22 Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents de Vlieger, Nienke van Rossum, Jolien Riley, Nicholas Miller, Andrew Collins, Clare Bucher, Tamara Children (Basel) Article In NSW, Australia, the views of primary-school aged children and their parents in regard to the importance of nutrition education at school are unclear. The aim of the current study was to explore children’s knowledge of nutrition and eating habits and to identify gaps that future school nutrition education programs could target. Students aged 9 to 12 years and their parents (n = 21 dyads) were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews, complete a nutrition knowledge questionnaire, and perform a “healthy-unhealthy” food sorting task in a University food laboratory. Among the children, nutrition knowledge scores concerning “serves & portions” of common foods were lowest, identifying a gap in knowledge related to portion size. All children categorized fruits, vegetables, cola, and water correctly as “healthy” or “unhealthy” in the sorting task, but not for the sausage and muesli bar, suggesting that further support categorising processed foods may be needed. The interviews indicated that parents do actively try to teach their children about nutrition, although they reported feeling uncertain about their own level of nutrition knowledge. Children and parents indicated that there is very little nutrition education in school and more is needed. This research could be used to inform future curriculum components related to nutrition education for primary school children. MDPI 2020-03-27 /pmc/articles/PMC7231028/ /pubmed/32230736 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children7040024 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
de Vlieger, Nienke
van Rossum, Jolien
Riley, Nicholas
Miller, Andrew
Collins, Clare
Bucher, Tamara
Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents
title Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents
title_full Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents
title_fullStr Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents
title_full_unstemmed Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents
title_short Nutrition Education in the Australian New South Wales Primary School Curriculum: Knowledge and Attitudes of Students and Parents
title_sort nutrition education in the australian new south wales primary school curriculum: knowledge and attitudes of students and parents
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7231028/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32230736
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children7040024
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