- Email: [email protected]
Food for Thought: A Nutrition Monitoring Project for Elementary School Children Using the Internet
G E M N O. 3 3 9
Food for Thought: A Nutrition Monitoring Project for Elementary School Children Using the Internet ......................................................................................... TARGET AUDIENCE
*Author for correspondence
PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
INTRODUCTION
During a summer training session at an area college in Boston, 30 teachers, school nurses, and health coordinators participating in the development of HealthNet attended workshops conducted by a nutrition faculty member on the use of the Food Guide Pyramid as a food guidance and dietary evaluation tool.The attendees participated in hands-on activities to learn the difficult tasks of estimating portion sizes and classifying foods into appropriate groups within the Pyramid. Placing food containers and actual food into appropriate food groups, measuring foods to illustrate serving sizes, and using food models to estimate ounces of meat and visual cues, such as a deck of cards or a tennis ball, to determine portion sizes are examples of the activities used. Each of the HealthNet schools needed access to the Internet, but participants did not need to be experienced with its use. Other faculty members provided specific training on use of the World Wide Web for age-appropriate data entry and retrieval, spreadsheet and graphing software for data analysis, and electronic mail and bulletin board application for communication. At the start of Food for Thought, teachers adjusted classroom activities for educational level and determined whether they would use supplemental nutrition activities, such as sending questions to the Internet bulletin board. We sent a letter to parents describing the project and provided directions for them to help their child complete a 1-day food record. Under their teachers’ supervision, the children categorized their food intake from the 1-day food record into the Food Guide Pyramid groupings and estimated the number of servings in each group. Students compared their individual food records with the recommendations of the Pyramid.The classroom teacher or,
HealthNet is an innovative teacher enhancement project that uses the Internet to integrate health education into the classroom. The HealthNet project is composed of two parts, HealthWatch and HealthQuest. HealthWatch is a computer system designed to monitor health habits. HealthQuest provides an online opportunity for teachers, school nurses, and students to interact with each other and with various health care professionals. The purpose of HealthNet is “to enhance health education at the elementary school level through the use of telecommunications and to integrate the school nurse into the health education curriculum in the classroom.”1 HealthNet contains five separate health-related projects (Food for Thought, Go to Sleep, Exercise, Sweet Tooth, and Growth and Development) that encourage students to evaluate their own health habits and compare them to national recommendations. Food for Thought is the nutrition module of the HealthNet project and the focus of this article. The Food for Thought project was developed with five objectives in mind: (1) to enable teachers and students to evaluate students’ eating habits by comparing their food intake with the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Health and Human Services’ Food Guide Pyramid recommendations,2 (2) to motivate students to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables and three servings of dairy foods daily, (3) to engage parents in the project by helping their children to complete a 1-day food record, (4) to provide students with experience measuring and collecting data, and (5) to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, which incorporates math, scientific method, writing, computers, and food science.
A total of 294 children from 7 schools and 14 classrooms in Massachusetts participated in the HealthNet project. Students were in the first through sixth grade and represented both the urban and suburban school systems.
in some cases, the upper-level elementary students collated the class data on the number of servings from each food group and sent it via the Internet to the college, where it was summarized. Students compared these data on the number of food group servings with food group servings data from classrooms within their school and from other participating schools and classrooms via the Internet. We designed an electronic list-serve for students to communicate about the project online with a nutrition faculty member, who is a registered dietitian, or a supervised graduate nutrition student. The elementary school students posed interesting questions such as “If you eat too many sweets and not enough good food, how long will you live?” and “If you get a sugar high, how do you get rid of it?” The registered dietitian or graduate student answered each question with additional questions in an age-appropriate manner to stimulate investigation. For instance, when one student asked how someone with lactose intolerance could obtain enough servings from the dairy group, the dietitian began a brief discussion of lactose intolerance with suggestions for high-calcium, low-lactose foods from the dairy group and other food groups.When the monitoring project revealed that many students were not consuming the recommended servings from the dairy group, the faculty/graduate student posed the question “What types of beverages are students drinking with meals and/or snacks?” Other topics, such as which orange and green vegetables contain vitamin A, prompted elementary students and teachers to investigate nutrition topics further. Students were also able to survey each other in the classroom about their favorite vegetables and beverages. For one assignment, students visited an imaginary food court and selected a healthy lunch using their new knowledge about nutrition. FOOD FOR THOUGHT FINDINGS AND TEACHER FEEDBACK The objective of HealthNet was to increase the awareness level of nutrition among school children and motivate
......................................................................................... 299
GEM
Nancie H. Herbold, Ed.D., R.D.,* Melinda D. Dennis, M.A., M.S., Nutrition Department, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115; Tel: (617) 521-2709; Fax: (617) 521-3137; E-mail: [email protected]
300
Herbold and Dennis/GEM NO. 339
them to consume the recommended number of servings of fruits, vegetables, and dairy foods. As accurately determining portion sizes is very difficult, students may have over- or underestimated their food intake. Data collected from the students’ records showed that 73% did not meet the recommended target of five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. The lack of adequate fruit and vegetable consumption by the HealthNet population is also documented by other research.3–5 In addition, only 42% of the students consumed three servings of foods from the dairy group for the day being studied, emphasizing the need for more calcium-containing foods among this population. Similar to the findings of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), not all children met their calcium requirement.6 Since this was a teacher enhancement program and not a nutrition intervention, we did not measure how many servings of fruits, vegetables, and dairy foods the children were consuming before the start of the program.We have now enhanced the Food for Thought project by collecting both pre- and postdata. Subsequent HealthNet curricula activities were developed to further reinforce the importance of fruit, vegetable, and dairy food consumption. Although this project was not designed to measure change in students’ intake of fruits, vegetables, and dairy foods, the remaining Food for Thought objectives were achieved.Anecdotal information indicated that some teachers integrated math and science, whereas others incorporated language and arts, thus meeting the interdisciplinary learning objective. At the end of the school year, the teachers gathered to share their classroom nutrition projects with one another and show their stu-
dents’ work. One teacher exposed her special education students to numerous materials and concepts to challenge their thinking in math, science, health, and computers. Her students also enjoyed the practical activities, such as chart and graph design, learning to balance their food intake, and discovering how different foods affect the body. Other teachers valued the program because their students learned about proper food choices and the connection between nutrition and health. For example, students observed the difference in bone strength between chicken bones soaked in vinegar, which leaches calcium, to bones not soaked in vinegar. Recent comments from teachers show that the program continues to thrive. One teacher wrote, I know that the experiences provided by the HealthNet projects will continue to be important to my classes because I will be able to refer back to them and the students will remember the exper iences and what they learned to help them reach a new level of understanding. Imagine conversations such as “Remember when you thought potatoes were high in fat, but they weren’t?”That’s why it is important to get all the facts and test them out and not just assume things.
CONCLUSION The Internet is a valuable and efficient tool for nutrition education as it allows health professionals to share information without being present in the classroom.As the use of telecommunication technology becomes increasingly popular, we encourage nutrition educators to take advantage of Internet access to educational resources to reach growing audiences, such as school-aged children. Projects such as HealthNet pro-
vide teachers with resources and professional expertise to carry out learning projects involving math, science, health, and technology. NOTE For more information on HealthNet: http://sun.simmons.edu/healthnet. REFERENCES 1. A guide to HealthNet: network to enhance health education in elementary schools. Boston: Simmons College, 1995. 2. The Food Guide Pyramid. Home and Garden Bulletin no. 252.Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Human Nutrition Information Service, 1992. 3. Munoz KA, Krebs-Smith SM, Ballard-Barbash R, Cleveland LE. Food intakes of US children and adolescents compared with recommendations. Pediatrics 1997;100: 323–9. 4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service. Unpublished data from the 1994–1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals. February 1998. Beltsville, MD. 5. Melnik T, Rhodes S,Wales K, Cowell C, Wolfe W. Food consumption patterns of elementary school children in New York City. J Am Diet Assoc 1998;98:159–64. 6. Aliamo K, McDowell MA, Briefel RR, et al. Dietary intake of vitamins, minerals and fiber of persons ages 2 months and over in the United States: Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Phase I, 1988–1991. Advanced data from Vital and Health Statistics no. 258. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 1994.
Food for Thought: A Nutrition Monitoring Project for Elementary School Children Using the Internet ......................................................................................... TARGET AUDIENCE
*Author for correspondence
PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
INTRODUCTION
During a summer training session at an area college in Boston, 30 teachers, school nurses, and health coordinators participating in the development of HealthNet attended workshops conducted by a nutrition faculty member on the use of the Food Guide Pyramid as a food guidance and dietary evaluation tool.The attendees participated in hands-on activities to learn the difficult tasks of estimating portion sizes and classifying foods into appropriate groups within the Pyramid. Placing food containers and actual food into appropriate food groups, measuring foods to illustrate serving sizes, and using food models to estimate ounces of meat and visual cues, such as a deck of cards or a tennis ball, to determine portion sizes are examples of the activities used. Each of the HealthNet schools needed access to the Internet, but participants did not need to be experienced with its use. Other faculty members provided specific training on use of the World Wide Web for age-appropriate data entry and retrieval, spreadsheet and graphing software for data analysis, and electronic mail and bulletin board application for communication. At the start of Food for Thought, teachers adjusted classroom activities for educational level and determined whether they would use supplemental nutrition activities, such as sending questions to the Internet bulletin board. We sent a letter to parents describing the project and provided directions for them to help their child complete a 1-day food record. Under their teachers’ supervision, the children categorized their food intake from the 1-day food record into the Food Guide Pyramid groupings and estimated the number of servings in each group. Students compared their individual food records with the recommendations of the Pyramid.The classroom teacher or,
HealthNet is an innovative teacher enhancement project that uses the Internet to integrate health education into the classroom. The HealthNet project is composed of two parts, HealthWatch and HealthQuest. HealthWatch is a computer system designed to monitor health habits. HealthQuest provides an online opportunity for teachers, school nurses, and students to interact with each other and with various health care professionals. The purpose of HealthNet is “to enhance health education at the elementary school level through the use of telecommunications and to integrate the school nurse into the health education curriculum in the classroom.”1 HealthNet contains five separate health-related projects (Food for Thought, Go to Sleep, Exercise, Sweet Tooth, and Growth and Development) that encourage students to evaluate their own health habits and compare them to national recommendations. Food for Thought is the nutrition module of the HealthNet project and the focus of this article. The Food for Thought project was developed with five objectives in mind: (1) to enable teachers and students to evaluate students’ eating habits by comparing their food intake with the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Health and Human Services’ Food Guide Pyramid recommendations,2 (2) to motivate students to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables and three servings of dairy foods daily, (3) to engage parents in the project by helping their children to complete a 1-day food record, (4) to provide students with experience measuring and collecting data, and (5) to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, which incorporates math, scientific method, writing, computers, and food science.
A total of 294 children from 7 schools and 14 classrooms in Massachusetts participated in the HealthNet project. Students were in the first through sixth grade and represented both the urban and suburban school systems.
in some cases, the upper-level elementary students collated the class data on the number of servings from each food group and sent it via the Internet to the college, where it was summarized. Students compared these data on the number of food group servings with food group servings data from classrooms within their school and from other participating schools and classrooms via the Internet. We designed an electronic list-serve for students to communicate about the project online with a nutrition faculty member, who is a registered dietitian, or a supervised graduate nutrition student. The elementary school students posed interesting questions such as “If you eat too many sweets and not enough good food, how long will you live?” and “If you get a sugar high, how do you get rid of it?” The registered dietitian or graduate student answered each question with additional questions in an age-appropriate manner to stimulate investigation. For instance, when one student asked how someone with lactose intolerance could obtain enough servings from the dairy group, the dietitian began a brief discussion of lactose intolerance with suggestions for high-calcium, low-lactose foods from the dairy group and other food groups.When the monitoring project revealed that many students were not consuming the recommended servings from the dairy group, the faculty/graduate student posed the question “What types of beverages are students drinking with meals and/or snacks?” Other topics, such as which orange and green vegetables contain vitamin A, prompted elementary students and teachers to investigate nutrition topics further. Students were also able to survey each other in the classroom about their favorite vegetables and beverages. For one assignment, students visited an imaginary food court and selected a healthy lunch using their new knowledge about nutrition. FOOD FOR THOUGHT FINDINGS AND TEACHER FEEDBACK The objective of HealthNet was to increase the awareness level of nutrition among school children and motivate
......................................................................................... 299
GEM
Nancie H. Herbold, Ed.D., R.D.,* Melinda D. Dennis, M.A., M.S., Nutrition Department, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115; Tel: (617) 521-2709; Fax: (617) 521-3137; E-mail: [email protected]
300
Herbold and Dennis/GEM NO. 339
them to consume the recommended number of servings of fruits, vegetables, and dairy foods. As accurately determining portion sizes is very difficult, students may have over- or underestimated their food intake. Data collected from the students’ records showed that 73% did not meet the recommended target of five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. The lack of adequate fruit and vegetable consumption by the HealthNet population is also documented by other research.3–5 In addition, only 42% of the students consumed three servings of foods from the dairy group for the day being studied, emphasizing the need for more calcium-containing foods among this population. Similar to the findings of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), not all children met their calcium requirement.6 Since this was a teacher enhancement program and not a nutrition intervention, we did not measure how many servings of fruits, vegetables, and dairy foods the children were consuming before the start of the program.We have now enhanced the Food for Thought project by collecting both pre- and postdata. Subsequent HealthNet curricula activities were developed to further reinforce the importance of fruit, vegetable, and dairy food consumption. Although this project was not designed to measure change in students’ intake of fruits, vegetables, and dairy foods, the remaining Food for Thought objectives were achieved.Anecdotal information indicated that some teachers integrated math and science, whereas others incorporated language and arts, thus meeting the interdisciplinary learning objective. At the end of the school year, the teachers gathered to share their classroom nutrition projects with one another and show their stu-
dents’ work. One teacher exposed her special education students to numerous materials and concepts to challenge their thinking in math, science, health, and computers. Her students also enjoyed the practical activities, such as chart and graph design, learning to balance their food intake, and discovering how different foods affect the body. Other teachers valued the program because their students learned about proper food choices and the connection between nutrition and health. For example, students observed the difference in bone strength between chicken bones soaked in vinegar, which leaches calcium, to bones not soaked in vinegar. Recent comments from teachers show that the program continues to thrive. One teacher wrote, I know that the experiences provided by the HealthNet projects will continue to be important to my classes because I will be able to refer back to them and the students will remember the exper iences and what they learned to help them reach a new level of understanding. Imagine conversations such as “Remember when you thought potatoes were high in fat, but they weren’t?”That’s why it is important to get all the facts and test them out and not just assume things.
CONCLUSION The Internet is a valuable and efficient tool for nutrition education as it allows health professionals to share information without being present in the classroom.As the use of telecommunication technology becomes increasingly popular, we encourage nutrition educators to take advantage of Internet access to educational resources to reach growing audiences, such as school-aged children. Projects such as HealthNet pro-
vide teachers with resources and professional expertise to carry out learning projects involving math, science, health, and technology. NOTE For more information on HealthNet: http://sun.simmons.edu/healthnet. REFERENCES 1. A guide to HealthNet: network to enhance health education in elementary schools. Boston: Simmons College, 1995. 2. The Food Guide Pyramid. Home and Garden Bulletin no. 252.Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Human Nutrition Information Service, 1992. 3. Munoz KA, Krebs-Smith SM, Ballard-Barbash R, Cleveland LE. Food intakes of US children and adolescents compared with recommendations. Pediatrics 1997;100: 323–9. 4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service. Unpublished data from the 1994–1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals. February 1998. Beltsville, MD. 5. Melnik T, Rhodes S,Wales K, Cowell C, Wolfe W. Food consumption patterns of elementary school children in New York City. J Am Diet Assoc 1998;98:159–64. 6. Aliamo K, McDowell MA, Briefel RR, et al. Dietary intake of vitamins, minerals and fiber of persons ages 2 months and over in the United States: Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Phase I, 1988–1991. Advanced data from Vital and Health Statistics no. 258. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 1994.