%0 Journal Article
%T Supporting children to act as change agents for parents in preparing their lunch box
%A Boaz Shulruf
%A Ella Shoval
%A Elliot M Berry
%A Ronit Jakobovich
%J Australasian Journal of Early Childhood
%@ 1839-5961
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1836939119831887
%X This study aims to examine the effects of an intervention model, Change Nutrition by Doing, in which children act as agents of change ¨C by ¡®doing¡¯ ¨C in taking responsibility for the contents of the lunch box they bring from home to consume at an early childhood centre. This quasi-randomised case-control trial consisted of 35 Israeli kindergartens whose teachers were participating in an in-service training programme of an intervention model for improving children¡¯s healthy nutritional behaviour. The control group consisted of 26 kindergartens whose teachers were participating in other in-service training programmes. The intervention model ran for eight months. The quality of the contents of the children¡¯s lunch box in the experimental groups was measured pre- and post-intervention through structured observations that yielded standardised scores. Mann-Whitney U Test for independent samples (at the kindergarten level) was employed to compare the change in lunch-box content across the controls. The results showed that in all the variables the difference between the intervention and the control kindergartens was significant, p< .002. It was concluded that the intervention had a significant positive impact on the content of the lunch boxes. This study shows the potential of supporting children to be change agents at home. In the future, there should be a follow-up of the family¡¯s perseverance of the acquired habit
%K Early childhood
%K parents
%K eating habits
%K healthy nutrition
%K kindergarten intervention
%K learning by doing
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1836939119831887