Horticultural Activities Using Colorful Food for the Improvement of Emotional Intelligence and the Reduction of Unbalanced Vegetable Diet of Young Children

This study focuses on horticultural activities using colorful food to reduce diets unbalanced in vegetables and to increase emotional intelligence. Horticultural activities using colorful food vegetables were based on ʻHealth in Daily Lifeʼ in the ʻ7th Kindergarten Curriculumʼ; to improve the dietary habits of the young children, the program was also linked with a parentsʼ education program. The research was conducted with a total of 70 children from classes for four-year-olds in three child-care centers located in Seoul. The horticultural activities based upon nutrition education included activities using colorful food vegetables and nutrition education. For the nutrition education group, only nutrition education was provided, while neither horticultural activities nor nutrition education were provided to the control group. The study was conducted from September to December 2011. A total of twelve sessions were conducted once a week for 60 minutes each. According to the result, after the horticultural activities with colorful food vegetable were conducted, both the nutrition education group and horticultural activity & nutrition education group showed improvements in ʻNutrition Knowledgeʼ compared to the control group. Regarding ʻUnbalanced Diet Behaviorsʼ, the horticultural activities & nutrition education group showed meaningful decreases compared to the control group. Moreover for preference of fruits and vegetables, the horticultural activities & nutrition education group revealed meaningful improvements. In conclusion, colorful food vegetable horticultural activity could be an effective approach to resolve the imbalance of health caused by unbalanced diets as children who participated in the colorful food vegetable horticultural activities continued to respond spontaneously to the colors of vegetables and fruits and showed joy and kept voluntarily eating them.