A “Healthy Pizza Kitchen” Nutrition Education Program at a Children's Health Museum

摘要

For nutrition education to be successful in changing behavior, schools, families, and communities must participate in or provide a variety of diverse, creative, accessible, and culturally appropriate programs. One venue for provision of nutrition education is a health and science education center that has exhibits and special programs not found in an average school. Establishing relationships with these organizations could greatly enhance a school health curriculum.1 Although nutrition information, displays, and programming are often found in these centers, studies examining whether provision of nutrition education in these venues increases knowledge or changes behavior are lacking. The purpose of this study, based on Social Cognitive Theory, was to evaluate the effectiveness of a field trip to an interactive health museum with a hands-on “Healthy Pizza Kitchen” (HPK) exhibit in teaching basic nutrition concepts relating to MyPyramid and creating balanced meals to multi-ethnic fifth-grade students.