Evaluation of the effectiveness of healthy school canteen intervention on nutritional literacy and dietary behavior among primary school students / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To explore the effectiveness of healthy school canteen intervention on nutritional literacy, food consumption, as well as attitude towards school canteen.@*Methods@#A primary school in Taizhou City was selected as the intervention school, and another comparable primary school was selected as the control one. A total of 320 students (163 in the intervention group and 157 in the control group) received a comprehensive intervention based on the construction of a healthy school canteen in the school,incluling healthy dining environment,food impravement,chef training,nutrition and health education, while the control group did not receive any intervention. Questionnaires survey was administered to both groups before and after the intervention.@*Results@#Before the intervention, no significant differences were found in the total scores of skills and nutrition literacy, frequency of food intake, behaviors and attitudes related to canteen construction between the two groups( P >0.05). Daily intake of vegetables, dairy products, fish/poultry/eggs/lean meat increased by 19.63, 15.95 and 19.63 percentage point respectively ( χ 2=15.25，9.14，13.93， P <0.01). The proportion of students reporting have read related intervention materials in the intervention group(95.71%) was higher than the control group(84.71%) ( χ 2= 11.04, P < 0.01 ). The students in favor of low salt, low oil and low sugar dishes in the intervention group (74.85%) was higher than in the control group(48.41%) ( χ 2=23.73, P <0.01).@*Conclusion@#Based on the comprehensive intervention of nutrition and health canteens can improve students nutrition literacy and dietary structure. It is recommended to adopt the form of "home school linkage" to carry out the construction of large sample, multi regional and long term nutrition and health canteens.