Everything on and about this world can be surprising to kids. Once they accept something that they’ve never seen or experienced, no matter whether it is visible or invisible, touchable or untouchable, things are just easy to be rooted in their mind. As a result, if we take advantage of their fast learning abilities, starting teaching them about nutrition while they are still young would probably allow them to manage their own body health well!
I remember that a couple years ago, when I got the news that one of my older sister’s best friends decided to major in nutrition, I was so shocked and totally couldn’t believe it! At that time, I just couldn’t understand that why there were people wanted to do a nutrition major. But how ironic it is that I’m now a nutrition student as well! So, I’ve been trying figuring out why I would have that kind of thought. Throughout my past education, when I was a kindergartener, all I learned about nutrition was that we have to eat as much vegetables and fruits as we can. In my elementary school and junior high school, the classes about nutrition and health were taught in a boring way. As a person who used to avoid eating almost all kind of leafy greens, since I believe I’m not the only one, I have become passionate about using fun ways to make children get more involved in the field of nutrition, especially approaches that help kids boost their interest in eating vegetables.
According to Akamatsu (2012), there are nothing much to do between nutrition knowledge and vegetable intake. This makes sense, however. Children are too young to understand the importance of eating sufficient amount of vegetable. Although benefits of eating vegetable should still be taught, teachers and parents had better use more fascinating strategies to make kids improve vegetable consumption.
Since there are too many stereotypes of how vegetable tastes, which is the exact reason that makes children hate to eat them, it is highly recommended that parents should do varieties with vegetables and create fascinating dishes. While I was checking out articles on ScienceDirect for more methods, “After-School Gardening Improves Children’s Reported Vegetable Intake and Physical Activity” was the one quickly caught my attention. I have never thought that gardening could be a solution to solve the problem! Before coming across this article, when it comes to tips that enhance children’s vegetable consumption, what I could think of was only about nice recipes. Out of my imagination, gardening is absolutely a smart idea! Due to the topic of being healthy, gardening allows kids to not only be more willing to eat vegetables, but also improve their physical activity. Besides, doing an activity that lets us be surrounded by nature also helps mental health! It is always fun utilizing non-formal ways to engage kids in learning about nutrition.
In these years, overweight and obesity have become more and more serious among children. They are problems that should be care about. As children can be trained effortless and habits are easier to cultivate at a younger age, nutrition-related issues have a high chance to be fixed by helping children form correct body health concepts. As a result, paying attention on kids’ health and nutritional status is what I’m particularly interested in.
Sources:
Akamatsu R. Is Knowledge or Preference More Strongly Related to Vegetable Intake among Elementary School Children in Japan?. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2012; 44: s13
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1499404612001042)
Hermann JR, Parker SP, Brown BJ, Siewe YJ, Denney BA, & Walker SJ. After-School Gardening Improves Children’s Reported Vegetable Intake and Physical Activity. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2006; 38: 201-202
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1499404606000704)