INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF NUTRITION EDUCATION ON THE LIFESTYLES OF THIRD-GRADE CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS

Abstract

The current study assessed improvement in healthy lifestyles of third-grade children from Iowa schools who participated in nutrition education lessons provided by the Iowa Department of Public Health’s Building and Strengthening Iowa Community Support for Nutrition and Physical Activity (BASICS) program in 2009. The program encourages children to eat more fruits and vegetables as snacks and to be active every day. Autoregressive models and logistic regression analysis results showed that the BASICS program improved awareness of the “Pick a better snack™ & Act” campaign among children and their parents. The program also led to children’s increased preferences toward fruits, vegetables, and low-fat milk products, and to parents’ increased willingness to offer healthy foods to their children. The program stimulated children’s desires to be physically active and parents’ attentiveness toward children’s physical activity. These results indicated that the children influenced their parents’ recognition of campaign materials and how often their parents provided them with fruits and vegetables. Increasing parent age negatively influenced the probability of children receiving free and reduced-price lunch, reflecting the better economic situation of families with older parents.