Supporting children to act as change agents for parents in preparing their lunch box

Abstract

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 kindergartens whose teachers were participating in an in-service training programme of an intervention model for improving children’s healthy nutritional behaviour. The control group consisted of 26 kindergartens whose teachers were participating in other in-service training programmes. The intervention model ran for eight months. The quality of the contents of the children’s lunch box in the experimental groups was measured pre- and post-intervention through structured observations that yielded standardised scores. Mann-Whitney U Test for independent samples (at the kindergarten level) was employed to compare the change in lunch-box content across the controls. The results showed that in all the variables the difference between the intervention and the control kindergartens was significant, p< .002. It was concluded that the intervention had a significant positive impact on the content of the lunch boxes. This study shows the potential of supporting children to be change agents at home. In the future, there should be a follow-up of the family’s perseverance of the acquired habit.