Determine eating habits of school age children and evaluate the effect of nutrition education with games on gaining healty eating habits

The purpose of this study is to determine eating habits of school age children and to evaluate the effect of nutrition education with games on gaining healty eating habits. The study, which is quasi-experimental with pre test-post test experimental model without a control group, was conducted at İzmir Murat Reis Primary School. The population of the study includes the 2nd grade students at the age of 8 at Murat Reis Primary School. The population consists of 59 primary school students who participated in all training and completed the pre test, the other two post tests. The data were collected via 'Scool Age Children's eatig Habits Questionnaire' determining school age children's features and eating habits and 'School Age Children's Knowledge of Eating Habits Questionnaire' which measures their knowledge of eating habits. These two questionnaires were applied to the students before the trainnings. Then, they were given a nutrition education with active learning methods and games. The two questionnaires were given to the groups right after the trainings and 3 months later. The data were analyzed via descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon, McNemar, Shapiro-Wilk tests. According to the findigs, 59.3% of the students didn't have any nutrition education and 84.7% of them considered their eating habits as good. It was also found that 50.8% of the students before the training, 30.5% of them right after the training and 40.7% of them 3 months after the training stated they skipped one of the meals and that it was lunch which was the most frequently skipped meal. Although there was no change in consumption of fresh fruit and fruit juice, there was an increase in the consumption of fresh vegetable and vegetable meals, but this wasn't transformed to behaviour. The consumption of diary products increased and transformed to behaviour. Although the consumption of eggs increased, it wasn't transformed to behaviour. There was no significant change in the consumption of meat products, however, the consumption of sea products and legumes increased after training. It was found that before the training 83.1% of the students consumed foods watching tv, after the training this rate decreased but it wasn't transformed to behaviour. It was revealed that 86.4% of the students did physical activities. The average nutrition knowledge of the students increased both right after the training and 3 months later. It was also suggested that the nutrition education given to the scool age children had a possitive effect on the nutrition knowledge, attitudes, behaviours.