Following recipes, adding ingredients, creating something unique, and seeing the finished products are the cooking processes that children can get actively involved with. This paper presents a quantitative study exploring the effectiveness of an inquiry-based cooking project to improve children's scientific process skills and health eating habits.…

Attitudes and biases toward body size perceived as fat and body size perceived as thin are present in young children (Cramer and Steinwert in "J Appl Dev Psychol" 19(3):429-451, 1998; Worobey and Worobey in "Body Image" 11:171-174, 2014). However, the information children have regarding body size and ways to modify body size…

Objectives: Healthy and sustainable eating should be encouraged in children. This study aimed to create, apply and evaluate the effectiveness of a specially designed, school-based educational programme to promote healthy and sustainable eating in children. Design: Pilot, school-based educational intervention, aimed at promoting health and…

Background: We gathered baseline data about student need of healthy, free school food, and if current school meal programming serves students in need of healthy free school food, in anticipation of the completion of a district-wide kitchen infrastructure and educational farm project in a high-poverty urban school district. Methods: We used mixed…

Purpose/Objectives: This study investigates the effect of meal component changes by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA) on school lunch quality and consumption in elementary school students, grade 2-5 before and after the HHFKA guidelines were implemented in July 2012 using the Healthy Eating Index. Methods: In Spring 2012, before…

Purpose/Objectives: In 2009, the Smarter Lunchroom Movement (SLM) strategy was created to provide schools across the United States (US) with evidence-based solutions to encourage healthier eating among children. Results, though, are inconsistent with how well this movement impacts school-aged children's healthy food selection and consumption.…

The prevalence of obese children has tripled during the past three decades. While lack of physical activity and unhealthy eating have been the primary focus of public health efforts, media has a significant influence on food choices and food consumption. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine if a media literacy intervention would…

Purpose/Objectives: The purposes of this study were to: 1) analyze beverage selections of elementary students consuming National School Lunch Program meals (NSLP) and lunches brought from home (LBFH), 2) compare overall meal quality (MQ) of NSLP and LBFH by food components using Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010), and 3) investigate the impact…

We sought to evaluate the feasibility of conducting a randomized trial to evaluate the efficacy of a preschool/kindergarten curriculum intervention designed to increase 4-year-old children's knowledge of healthy eating, active play and the sustainability consequences of their food and toy choices. Ninety intervention and 65 control parent/child…

Background: Identifying lifestyle factors such as physical activity (PA) patterns and eating behaviors of children may be beneficial in implementing interventions in urban elementary schools. Purpose: To examine PA levels and self-efficacy (SE) in PA and health eating (HE) of third, fourth, and fifth graders in 3 low economic elementary schools in…

An eBook for Oral Health Literacy© curriculum was used as a brief intervention to help school-aged children use their functional health literacy skills of reading, writing, and speaking to learn about oral health hygiene and the importance of choosing healthy food and beverages for their teeth. The curriculum focused on building functional…

Children's ideas, which differ from a scientific view, are termed as alternative conceptions (AC). AC are extremely resistant to change and arise from everyday experience. Investigation of children's AC about weight gain and their ability to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy foods is important, because it can help teachers reduce obesity…

This study aims to examine the effects of an intervention model, "Change Nutrition by Doing," in which children act as agents of change -- by 'doing' -- in taking responsibility for the contents of the lunch box they bring from home to consume at an early childhood centre. This quasi-randomised case-control trial consisted of 35 Israeli…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to evaluate the effects of two farm-to-school programs, specifically the Field-to-Fork Multi-visit Program (N = 264) and the Field-to-Fork After-school Club (N = 56), on nutritional outcomes of elementary school students (third to fifth grade) from urban, diverse, and lower-income communities. Data…

This study examined the fruit and vegetable intake of a large sample of Alabama school children in elementary schools receiving fifty percent or more free or reduced priced lunch who qualify for the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. The results of this study provide insight as to whether access to a variety of fresh produce, in additional to…