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Overview
Dairy Council of California revised its lower elementary nutrition education
program to align with USDA’s MyPyramid. In the 2005-2006 school year, an external evaluation firm, WestEd,
designed an outcomes evaluation of the second grade nutrition education program,
Healthy Choices, Healthy Me (HCHM) to determine what students learn about
healthy eating. Over 800 students from 38 California classrooms at 19 schools participated
in the project. Half of the teachers taught the program’s seven nutrition lessons,
while the second half did not teach nutrition during the study. Students were more
likely to correctly classify foods in food groups after learning about nutrition
and retained that knowledge four months later. After the program, students intended
to try to eat breakfast daily, which studies have shown is important for proper
growth and classroom attention, attendance and achievement. Students also were more
likely to report eating food-group foods for breakfast and snacks after going through
the program.
A second part of the evaluation
project was to identify if student outcomes varied based on nutrition education
information sent home to parents. A "Note to Families" on nutrition is included in the program, and half of the classrooms
receiving the HCHM nutrition lessons received a second booklet,
Making Meals Matter for Your School-Age Child. Results of the project suggest that the parent
education materials brought home during this study improved student nutrition knowledge
to classify foods, healthy dietary behaviors such as eating vegetables or cheese
for a snack, and intent to change future dietary choices such as eating breakfast
every day. This indicates the significant impact parents have on second graders'
food choices with nutrition information sent home to families.
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Teacher Comments on Nutrition Lessons
The success of HCHM depends on teachers to implement each lesson, fidelity
to the program and their level of interest in the subject matter. All of the 19
teachers in the treatment group returned the Teacher Survey and the majority were
very happy with the program and the specific lessons. Feedback on each lesson was
solicited and suggestions are included with ongoing program improvements. In fact,
12 teachers "agreed" and seven "somewhat agreed" that implementation of the program
was easy for them. Eighteen teachers marked that their nutrition goals were mostly
or completely met after using the program. Teacher comments included:
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