Online nutritional education intervention in elementary school students in the state of Veracruz

Abstract

Abstract

Objective: To contribute to the improvement of the nutritional status, eating habits and nutritional knowledge of elementary school students through an online nutritional education intervention.

Materials and Methods: Quasi-experimental design intervention in which 30 students from a public primary school located in the municipality of Veracruz participated, the sample consisted of 10 first-grade students, 8 third-grade students, and 12 fifth-grade students. which were separated into the control group (CG) and the intervention group (IG), in both groups pre and post intervention, nutritional status, eating habits and food-nutritional knowledge were measured, then a nutritional education workshop was provided only for the group For the intervention, non-parametric statistics were used for the analysis, using the Wilcoxon and MC Nemar statistical tests.

Results: There was no significant improvement for the nutritional status variable (p = .625) or for the eating habits variable (p = .688), however variations were found such as a reduction in the consumption of junk food and an increase in water consumption, Legumes and dairy products, changes not observed for CG, as for the food knowledge variable, positive results were obtained (p = 0.04), the control group did not present significant improvement for any of the variables previously exposed.

Conclusions: Nutrition education has a very wide field of topics that must be provided as a subject from basic education and always by trained personnel, they are necessary knowledge because they are dealt with throughout life and this reason should be sufficient justification for their inclusion from primary education as well as being a preventive measure for the development of chronic degenerative diseases and promoting good general health.