Abstract
The present study aimed to conduct and evaluate cross-curricular food and nutrition education (“shokuiku”) classes that incorporated bone mass measurements. Food and nutrition education classes were conducted in health, mathematics, and home economics classes for four class periods. Food and nutrition education in the Japanese school system is defined as “acquisition of knowledge of food and nutrition, and the ability to make appropriate decisions through practical experience with food, with the aim of developing people's ability to live on a healthy diet.” The perspectives taught were “healthy lifestyle and prevention of disease” in the health classes, “utilization of data” in the mathematics classes, and “diets to satisfy the nutritional requirements of junior high school students” in the home economics classes. We measured bone mass using calcaneal ultrasound and analyzed the food and nutrition education classes using worksheets. The average Z score (an indicator of bone mass, compared with the standard value for the same sex and age) was 97.6% for boys and 104.0% for girls. More than 70% of the students found the worksheets interesting.
About 90% of the students mentioned bone mass in the health classes. Some students acquired an understanding of the pleiotropic nature of lifestyle-related diseases (health), learned how to read data and got information on how to acquire a high bone mass (mathematics), and gained an understanding of the characteristics of calcium and calcium-rich foods (home economics).
Therefore, bone mass measurement, in which students have a high interest, was concluded to be the most suitable teaching material for food and nutrition education. The results also suggest that cross-curricular food and nutrition education practices related to bones and health can improve understanding of food and nutrition education while achieving the goals for each subject. However as wed did not achieve our goal for some descriptions, we plan to continue to develop and improve food and nutrition education classes.
