Effectiveness of Taste Lessons with and without additional experiential learning activities on children's willingness to taste vegetables.

This study assessed the effectiveness of the Dutch school programme Taste Lessons with and without additional experiential learning activities on children's willingness to taste unfamiliar vegetables. Thirty-three primary schools (877 children in grades 6-7 with a mean age of 10.3 years) participated in Taste Lessons Vegetable Menu (TLVM, lessons and extra activities), Taste Lessons (TL, lessons), or a control group. A baseline and follow-up measurement was used to assess for each child: number of four familiar and four unfamiliar vegetables tasted, quantity tasted, choice of vegetable of which to eat more, and number of vegetables willing to taste again later. Furthermore, children filled out a questionnaire on daily vegetable intake and food neophobia. Multilevel and Cox regression analyses were conducted to compare changes in the outcome measures between the three study groups. No significant intervention effects were found on willingness to taste unfamiliar vegetables. Neither were effects found on familiar vegetables, except for number of familiar vegetables tasted (p < 0.05). Furthermore, no significant intervention effects were found on daily vegetable consumption and food neophobia. These results indicate that more intensive school-based nutrition education activities are needed to increase children's willingness to taste unfamiliar vegetables and increase their vegetable intake.

Unravelling the effect of the Dutch school-based nutrition programme Taste Lessons: the role of dose, appreciation and interpersonal communication.

BACKGROUND: To unravel the effect of school-based nutrition education, insight into the implementation process is needed. In this study, process indicators of Taste Lessons (a nutrition education programme for Dutch elementary schools) and their association with changes in behavioural determinants relevant to healthy eating behaviour are studied. METHODS: The study sample consisted of 392 Dutch primary school children from 12 schools. Data were collected using teacher and child questionnaires at baseline, and at one and six months after the intervention. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted to study the association between dose, appreciation and children's engagement in interpersonal communication (talking about Taste Lessons with others after the lessons), and change in knowledge, awareness, skills, attitude, emotion, subjective norm and intention towards two target behaviours. RESULTS: With an average implementation of a third of the programme activities, dose positively predicted change in children's subjective norm of the teacher after one month. Teachers and children highly appreciated Taste Lessons. Whereas teacher appreciation was inversely associated, child appreciation was positively associated with children's change in awareness, emotion and subjective norm of teachers after one month and in attitude and subjective norm of parents after six months. Interpersonal communication was positively associated with children's change in five determinants after one month and in attitude and intention after six months. CONCLUSIONS: The implementation process is related to the programme outcomes of Taste Lessons. Process data provide valuable insights into factors that contribute to the effect of interventions in real-life settings.

Effectiveness of Taste Lessons with and without additional experiential learning activities on children's psychosocial determinants of vegetables consumption.

Experiential learning methods seem to be promising to enhance healthy eating behaviour in children. Therefore, this study compared the effectiveness of the Dutch programme Taste Lessons with and without additional experiential learning activities on children's psychosocial determinants of vegetable consumption. In a quasi-experimental design, 800 children aged 8-11 years old from 34 elementary schools participated in a Taste Lessons (TL: 5 lessons) group, a Taste Lessons Vegetable Menu (TLVM: TL with 3 added experiential learning activities) group, and a control group. During a baseline and follow-up measurement, children completed a questionnaire on psychosocial determinants towards vegetables consumption. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted to compare changes in the determinants between the TLVM group and the TL group, and between the two intervention groups and the control group. The TLVM group showed a significantly higher increase in knowledge (p < 0.001), attitude and subjective norm of the teacher (both p < 0.05), whereas the TL group only showed a significantly higher increase in knowledge (p < 0.001) compared to the control group. Increases in knowledge (p < 0.10), subjective norm (p < 0.10) and cooking self-efficacy (p < 0.05) were higher in the TLVM group than in the TL group. Therefore, more and stronger effects were found in children who participated in the additional hands-on activities.

Effect of the Dutch school-based education programme 'Taste Lessons' on behavioural determinants of taste acceptance and healthy eating: a quasi-experimental study.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effect of the Dutch school-based education programme 'Taste Lessons' on children's behavioural determinants towards tasting unfamiliar foods and eating healthy and a variety of foods. DESIGN: In a quasi-experimental study design, data on behavioural determinants were collected at baseline, four weeks and six months after the intervention in both the intervention and control group. Children completed consecutively three questionnaires in which knowledge, awareness, skills, attitude, emotion, subjective norm and intention towards the two target behaviours were assessed. Teachers implemented on average a third of the programme activities. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted to compare individual changes in the determinants in the intervention group with those in the control group, corrected for children's gender and age. Effect sizes were expressed as Cohen's d. SETTING: Dutch elementary schools. SUBJECTS: Forty-nine classes (1183 children, 9-12 years old) in grades 5-8 of twenty-one elementary schools. RESULTS: The intervention group showed a higher increase in knowledge (d=0·26, P<0·01), which persisted after six months (d=0·23, P<0·05). After four weeks, the intervention group showed a higher increase in number of foods known (d=0·22, P<0·05) and tasted (d=0·21, P<0·05), subjective norm of the teacher (d=0·17, P<0·05) and intention (d=0·16, P<0·05) towards the target behaviours. CONCLUSIONS: Partial implementation of Taste Lessons during one school year showed small short-term effects on increasing behavioural determinants in relation to tasting unfamiliar foods and eating healthy and a variety of foods. Full and repeated implementation of Taste Lessons in subsequent years might result in larger effects.