The effect of game-based nutrition education on primary school children's nutrition attitudes and behaviors

To create healthy societies, it is important to develop healthy eating behaviors and raise awareness starting from childhood through nutrition education. Game-based education approaches motivate learning information that is made a part of the game by going beyond traditional education methods. In our study, a board game was designed to help elementary school children recognize nutrients. The effects of this game-based nutrition education intervention on children's nutritional habits, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behaviors were evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. The developed Food Hunter game was implemented on a total of 50 4th grade students (24 in the intervention group and 26 in the control group) in 3 private schools in March-May for 4 weeks/week for 1 day/40 minutes. Participants' eating habits were assessed using the "Food Frequency Questionnaire", nutrition attitude was assessed using the "Nutrition Attitude Subscale (NAS)", nutrition self-efficacy was assessed using the "Children's Dietary Self- Efficacy Scale (CDSS)", and nutrition behaviors were assessed using the "Food Behavior Scale (FBS)" before and after the board game intervention. As a result of the board game intervention, it was found that the frequency of consumption of all main and snacks increased statistically significantly in the intervention group compared to the control group (p<0.05). In the comparison of the groups' post-intervention NAS, CDSS and FBS scores, a statistically significant increase was found in favor of the intervention group (p<0.05). A moderate positive and statistically significant correlation was found between the Food Hunter Game Evaluation (FHGE) score and the NAS score (r=0.419, p<0.05), between the FHGE score and the FBS score (r=0.474, p<0.05), between the NAS score and the FBS score (r=0.448, p<0.05), and between the CDSS score and the FBS score (r=0.574, p<0.05). In conclusion, the board game-based nutrition education intervention was effective in improving the nutritional habits, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behaviors of primary school children.