Dr Maha Abdelrahman Mowafy
Cairo University, Egypt
Title: The effect of nutrition education on food choices of sixth grade children in a primary school
Biography
Biography: Dr Maha Abdelrahman Mowafy
Abstract
The impact of behavior on health, with a special emphasis on children and adolescents, is a central focus for current health policy and for the prevention agenda. This is an interventional study with pre/post assessment. The objectives of which are to test KAP of children in sixth grade primary school as regards healthy eating habits and conduct health educational intervention. A pretest (questionnaire) was taken before the program to assess the KAP among school children as regards healthy eating habits. According to KAP analysis outcome the health education material was tailored. All cases included in this study were subjected to Health education intervention. Posttest was taken after 2 weeks to determine the impact of the program. A total number of 100 student of children aged 11-12 years in the sixth grade primary were included. The results showed that 41% of studied group were boys in comparison to 59% of Girls. The majority of students had a normal BMI 64%, overweight were 29% (23% boys & 33% girls), and only 14% were obese (12% boys& 16% girls). There was a great improvement in Knowledge in relation to the number of meals per day from 6.7 to 50. For attitude the highest percentage of improvement was related to Milk and yogurt snacks from 11.5 to 85.6 after intervention and for breakfast as a practice. Conclusion: Nutrition education should be introduced to school children as it highly affects their food choices and preferences.