Professionals’ Recommended Strategies to Improve Australian Adolescents’ Knowledge of Nutrition and Food Systems
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
- What are the best strategies to increase adolescents’ knowledge of nutrition and food systems?
- What do you think could be done differently to increase their knowledge?
- Do you have other suggestions for school-based N&FS education programs?
3. Results
“There is very little chance of getting a new solo called nutrition subject and that is not necessary….Curriculum at schools can do this not by having a separate nutrition class, but integrating nutrition and food systems issues into the normal science curriculum…into Biological Sciences, Geography, History, English Literature and other…for example English teachers can get the students to write about food security questions…get them in geography classes to write about water and food distribution, in history classes they can look at how food supply in Australia has changed or somewhere else has been changed since world war two”.(interviewee #21)
“I think that it is important to provide students with opportunities to gain an understanding and perhaps through visits to companies and projects and other things where they actually investigate how food is grown, how food is processed, how it gets to the consumer is an important part of learning about their life support systems”.(interviewee #10)
“They need to know about what is a sustainable healthy food basket…a basket of goods needs meet some nutrition requirements and anything over that is waste. …they need to know about not using packaging…. They need to know about foods that they choose and sustainable food system and sustainable environment”.(interviewee #7)
“First of all it is the shopping, it’s the making a shopping list, making a healthy meal, knowing what to have in your pantry and refrigerator, seasonal ingredients so that’s the food literacy skills then the food preparation the cooking skills”.(interviewee #6)
3.1. Pre-Service and In-Service Training of Schoolteachers about N&FS
“Teachers need to be better prepared and not assume they can teach it from no background”.(interviewee #6)
3.2. Training Students to Develop a Critical Mind about N&FS Issues
“Integrate political issues, issues of public interest, encourage and teach them to think critically and ask them to write critical argument. They need to recognize how social, economic and political determinants influence our food consumption”.(interviewee #21)
3.3. Multidisciplinary Collaborations to Improve School-Based N&FS Education
“We need to engage different educationalists to find how they can use food-related issues into current curriculum. I think we need to make sure that university level educators are having input into the school curriculum. I think, it should be cutting edge material that goes into that”.(interviewee #8)
3.4. A Supportive Education Environment for Students
“The parents, the school and the students, and teachers all are working together. That’s really important because we could be teaching students but we also need to ensure that the parents are also involved so that it’s always a team work approach. That’s important, a whole school approach so that what we’re teaching in the schools is also being underpinned and, and supported at home”.(interviewee #15)
“If there was a master chef that focused on healthy eating I think it would be a wonderful initiative. I think all the cooking shows are probably doing more damage to our food supply than anything else because there is no regard to nutrition at all. There just, you know the standard thing of butter and lots of salt, lots of dairy fat, lots of everything that I would regard as something as a special occasion so it’s kind of party food rather than everyday food. So a sort of Jamie Oliver in Australia would be a really good outcome.”.(interviewee #4)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Author Contributions
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Sadegholvad, S.; Yeatman, H.; Parrish, A.-M.; Worsley, A. Professionals’ Recommended Strategies to Improve Australian Adolescents’ Knowledge of Nutrition and Food Systems. Nutrients 2017, 9, 844. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu9080844
Sadegholvad S, Yeatman H, Parrish A-M, Worsley A. Professionals’ Recommended Strategies to Improve Australian Adolescents’ Knowledge of Nutrition and Food Systems. Nutrients. 2017; 9(8):844. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu9080844
Chicago/Turabian StyleSadegholvad, Sanaz, Heather Yeatman, Anne-Maree Parrish, and Anthony Worsley. 2017. "Professionals’ Recommended Strategies to Improve Australian Adolescents’ Knowledge of Nutrition and Food Systems" Nutrients 9, no. 8: 844. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu9080844