Objective: To evaluate the effect of nutrition and food safety education among middle school students in a poverty-stricken county in west China, and to explore the better education model for further education.
Methods: Students of grade 7 to 9 were selected from 4 middle schools in the country through multi-stage cluster sampling for the questionnaire, and the schools were assigned into an intervention group or a control group. After students in the intervention schools completed one year nutrition and food safety education with the textbooks, students were chosen from the same 4 schools to finish the same questionnaire again.
Results: A total of 410 students from grade 7 to 9 were selected at the baseline study, and 474 students in the final study. The essential characteristics of the 2 groups were not statistically significant (P>0.05). In the baseline investigation, the differences in the scores on nutrition and food safety knowledge, attitude and practice between the 2 groups were not significant (P>0.05). In the final study, the scores on the knowledge, attitude of nutrition knowledge learning, and dietary habits among students in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P<0.05). School-students mixed model demonstrated that the intervention was protective factor on scores of knowledge, in particular with nutrition related diseases and reasonable diet (P<0.05). But the intervention didn't affect the scores on attitude in both ways (P>0.05).
Conclusion: Nutrition and food safety education can improve the nutrition and food safety knowledge effectively. The curriculum should be further standardized and different emphases should be set up to different grades to cultivate healthy diet behaviors.