Effects of 16-Class Nutrition Education on Middle School Students' Dietary Behavior and Nutritional Knowledge

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of a set of 16 nutrition education lessons on the eating behaviors and nutrition knowledge of middle school students. The target was a group of 128 boys in the first year of middle school in Changwon, who took the classes from the 29th of August, 2011, to the 17th of February, 2012. The education was performed for 16 weeks using the e-learning textbook, 'Health and nutrition of youth', and a teacher's guidebook developed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The results were summarized as follows. Students demonstrated significant changes in their knowledge about nutrition and in their dietary behavior due to the nutrition education, and the effects were observed to be maintained for one year after education. The average nutrition knowledge score before, immediately after, and 1 year after the education was significantly increased from 13.0 before the education to 18.8 after education (p<0.001), maintaining the score of 18.5 1 year later. The eating-related questions of 'I will practice healthy eating habits in life' and 'Nutrition education is necessary to build healthy eating habits', were given a high score by the students at the last survey conducted one year later. Of course, it is not easy to change the dietary behavior of students through dietary education in schools. Nevertheless, the results of this study demonstrated that such educatcan is necessary since the habits can indeed be changed, as observed in the present study.