Child involvement in choosing a recipe, purchasing ingredients, and cooking at school increases willingness to try new foods and reduces food neophobia

Abstract

Objective

To investigate the effect of involving children in their feeding process (choosing a recipe, purchasing the ingredients, and cooking) on their lunch food choice in a school environment. Design

Quasi-experimental. Setting

Two schools in Bilbao, Spain. Participants

A total of 202 children (aged 8–9 years) participated in the study (43% girls), with 99 in the nutrition education (NE) group and 103 in the hands-on (HO) group. Intervention

Three 1-hour workshops (1 workshop/wk), different for each group: HO, cooking-related activities, and NE, healthy habits promotion through nutrition education activities. Main Outcome Measures

Food neophobia, diet quality, cooking self-efficacy and attitudes toward cooking, and food intake and selection of the experimental lunches. Analysis

Chi-square test of independence, ANCOVA, and t tests were performed. Results

Students from the HO group selected and ate more spinach/broccoli (P < 0.001 and P = 0.02, respectively) for the first lunch; and selected more spinach/broccoli (P = 0.04) for the second lunch. After the intervention, improvements were observed for spinach liking and neophobia for the HO group and cooking self-efficacy and KidMed score for both groups. Conclusions and Implications

Both interventions succeeded in improving children's diet quality, but only the HO group reduced food neophobia levels. Therefore, involving children in choosing a recipe, purchasing ingredients, and cooking may promote changing eating behaviors toward healthy habits such as increasing vegetable consumption.