Encouraging children to eat vegetables

It is important for children to maintain a healthy and balanced diet throughout their childhood and youth. Children tend to skip vegetables in their meals as they are not much liked; the tastes of vegetables are also highly specific and each individual has to get used to them by repeated tasting. The aim of this undergraduate thesis was to analyse how often children eat vegetables, which types of vegetables they like and which they do not, to determine if the executed method of pedagogical work positively influences their knowledge about the importance of consuming vegetables, to model and apply a right approach to promoting eating vegetables which would encourage children to eat more vegetables of different types. Pupils took part in a creative practical activity during a lesson and analysed if this helped change their attitude towards eating vegetables. One of our questions was whether practical presentation of different types of vegetables encouraged children to eat less-known types of vegetables. 229 fourth graders from various elementary schools in Ljubljana region were included in the empirical part of research. Nine fourth grade classes in elementary school had a lecture which consisted of theoretical part and practical workshops. Pupils were presented with the importance of eating vegetables in the theoretical part introduced to different types of vegetables from which they made various forms in the workshops. Successfulness of our work was measured by two questionnaires which were filled in by pupils at the beginning and the end of the lecture. We found that half of children included in research eat vegetables multiple times or once a day. Vegetables most known to children are salad, carrot, tomato, cabbage and potato, while other types are less-known, Most children reported that it is important to eat vegetables because they are healthy and have many vitamins. Based on these results we concluded that our teaching form and method was successful in motivating children as they willingly took an active part in the lecture and successfully expressed their creativity in the workshops where they constructed items from vegetables and ate them with pleasure. Because of positive motivation caused by an interesting lecture, 70,7% children stated that they will eat vegetables more often in future