？LK？？RET？M ？？RENC？LER？NDE BESLENME E？？T？M？ üZER？NE B？R ARA？TIRMA/ A Research On Nutrition Education In Primary School Students

Nutrition is one of the most important environmental factors having impacts on health. Therefore, adequate and balanced nutrition is necessary for everybody, particularly for children. In this research, it is aimed to improve and develop students’ level of basic knowledge on adequate and balanced nutrition and their behaviors towards the desired direction through a programmed dietetics. The research was conducted between the years 2008 and 2010. 80 students, 43 girls and 37 boys, were questioned in total in the research. Two groups？Group I= students and their parents (n=40); Group II= students only (n=40)？ were created within the scope of the research and having provided questionnaire form to the both groups, socio-demographic characteristics and certain nutrition habits of the parents and students’ level of nourishment knowledge (threpsology) and habits were determined and their anthropometric measurements were made. And then, dietetics (nutrition training) was provided to the groups for a period of two months. At the end of the dietetics questionnaire form was given to the groups again and their anthropometric measurements were made again. One month later they were again requested to answer the questionnaire form and thus, sustainability/ permanency condition of the nutrition training was evaluated. Average scores of total nourishment knowledge of students before the training were found in the group-I as 80.9 ± 10.31, and in the group-II as 76.7±10.38. After the training however these values were found respectively as 89.9±5.55 in Group-I and as 85.0±6.48 in the Group-II. It was observed that post-training total nourishment knowledge scores of the students were increased in reference to the scores found before the training. According to the findings of our study for the purpose of providing to children the habit of having breakfast, preventing them to skip meals and conversion of their nutrition knowledge to behavior, “Feeding Times” within certain period of times should be arranged at all schools and dietetics (nourishment training) should be provided to students and parents within these period of times by means of various entertaining and amusing activities.