抄録
We provided dietary education through cooking classes for kindergarten children in order to introduce cooking to the children early in life and to provide information to their mothers with the objective of improving their dietary knowledge. The effects of the dietary education were then examined by comparing the knowledge of the mothers who participated in the cooking class versus those who did not participate at one month after the class. The content of the dietary education was evaluated by the kindergarten teachers and mothers who participated in the cooking class at the conclusion of the class. Questionnaires were administered to evaluate the dietary education, as well as to investigate the dietary behavior of the children and their mothers. The analysis of the collected data revealed the following results:
1. Kindergarten teachers rated the cooking class highly, and those mothers who participated felt positive about having their children attend the class;
2. The dietary education improved the mothers’understanding of appropriate foods, reasonable snack sizes, and dietary knowledge. After the education they were also more willing to create more cooking opportunities for their children (e.g. They were more likely to let their children use knives).
3. The analysis of the data collected one month after the cooking class did not reveal any statistically significance differences in the children’s dietary behavior such as greetings at snack time and cooking participation between those children who participated in the cooking class and those who did not. However, slightly more children in the participating group washed their hands before snacking. Mothers in the participating group showed more interest in nutrition labeling (p<0.05).
