Does food and health education in school influence students’ everyday life?

• Published in: Health education journal Vol. 81; no. 1; pp. 29 - 39
• Main Authors: Beinert, Cecilie, Sørlie, Anne Cathrine, Åbacka, Gun, Palojoki, Päivi, Vik, Frøydis Nordgård
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.02.2022; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Adolescents; Children; Cooking; Diet; Dietetics; Eating Habits; economics; Education; Education & Educational Research; Elementary School Students; Environmental & Occupational; Everyday life; Family and Consumer Sciences; Focus groups; Food; Food and health; Food sanitation; Foods Instruction; Foreign Countries; Health; Health Education; Health information; Health Sciences; Healthy food; home; home economics; Hygiene; Hälsovetenskaper; life skills; Life Style; Norwegian; Nutrition; Program Effectiveness; Public; Public Schools; Relevance (Education); school; School meals; Secondary School Students; Student Attitudes; Students; Teachers; Norway; life skills; students; school; Food and health; home economics
• ISSN: 0017-8969; 1748-8176
• DOI: 10.1177/00178969211045722

Objective: The Norwegian National Action Plan for a Healthier Diet calls for discussion of new ways to communicate health information. An already established and important arena in which to do so is school, in the Food and Health (FH) subject in particular. The aim of this study was to investigate how Norwegian students experience the FH subject, and how they believe it impacts on their everyday lives. Design: Qualitative study using focus group discussions Setting: Three public schools in Norway Methods: Focus group discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Results: The students reported the relevance of the school subject FH to their everyday life. However, how much FH was experienced as having impacted on their everyday lives with respect to cooking at home, food choice and food hygiene varied. Conclusions: More research is needed to explore how FH can have a stronger impact on students’ actual food choices and cooking practices. This is important in order to tackle contemporary dietary challenges among children and adolescents. Rather than discussing new channels of health education, we suggest that the FH subject area should be strengthened in schools by increasing teachers’ competence and focusing more strongly on how best to influence students’ food choices.