Teenagers Teaching Nutrition: Effects on Their Own Dietary Habits

This researcher first felt the need for teenage nutrition education beyond the traditional in-class activities after teaching several years of home economics at the high school level. During discussions, students revealed that they daily consumed only small quantities of food in order to lose weight or remain slim. Diets leaned heavily towards meats and carbohydrate foods, and included very few fruits and minute quantities of vegetables other than potatoes. Students also showed a great reluctance to prepare or sample unfamiliar foods in the laboratory, especially vegetables and milk products. Discussions with other teachers showed those to be common problems in teenage nutrition. The researcher observed that the use of games, lab experiments, and home projects in addition to classroom lecture and discussion seemed to have little or not effect upon teenage students’ attitudes towards improved eating habits. Therefore, this researcher felt that having students assume some responsibility for the nutrition education of others might make a more lasting impression and foster an interest in maintaining more nutritionally balanced diets. The objective of the study was to see if the diets of teenage students would improve as a result of involving them in their own instruction through the process of teaching nutrition concepts to others