Evaluation Summary

The 4th grade nutrition education program consists of seven lessons that include interactive activities, simulations, and reflections taught by classroom teachers. Aligned with California’s Common Core Content Standards, California’s National Health Education Standards, and current psychological theory, each lesson is designed specifically for 4th graders. For example, the 4th grade program includes age-appropriate critical thinking skills, such as planning, goal-setting, and creating and analyzing food records. An evaluation of our program has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Translational Behavioral Medicine. The 4th grade program has a moderate public health impact using the RE-AIM framework indicating that class time spent on nutrition education has a positive effect on student choices.

Lessons Cover

• The five food groups and their main nutrients
• Estimating appropriate serving sizes using hand symbols
• How to be physically active for 60 minutes each day
• Creating and evaluating food records
• Planning and setting goals to help improve healthy eating and physical activity
  

Program Materials

• Teacher’s Guide
• Student’s workbook (English and Spanish versions)
• Family connection and homework activities
• Supplemental visual materials
  

Key findings from research evaluating the program

• Over 150,000 fourth grade students attending public elementary schools in California received the Nutrition Pathfinders program in 2011-2012.
• The program increased students’ consumption of foods from the five food groups, including whole grains, proteins, and fruits.
• The program decreased students’ consumption of foods high in empty calories and high sugar drinks.
• Parents reported that children read food labels, wanted to try new foods, and talked about eating balanced meals more often after completing the program.
• The program and homework activities increased parents’ frequency of serving foods from the five food groups.
• Teachers indicated that they generally liked all of the lessons, and that the lessons were easy to teach and well designed for their students.
  

Conclusions

The 4th grade program led to greater changes in 4th grade students’ nutritional intake compared to other similar nutrition education programs for younger children, and many of those changes lasted longer than what has been observed for younger children. The sustained changes observed in 4th graders may be due to the 4th grade program targeting more advanced critical thinking skills, or perhaps the positive changes observed in parent nutrition behaviors.

About the Study

A formative evaluation was conducted by researchers at RTI International and the University of Southern California during the 2011-2012 school year. Forty-seven fourth grade classrooms from public elementary schools in California were randomly assigned to either an Intervention or Control groups to evaluate the effectiveness of the program, which included over 1,700 children and over 1,200 parents of those children. The evaluation tested changes in students’ nutrition knowledge, attitudes towards nutrition, and healthy and unhealthy dietary intake, as well as changes in parent nutrition related behaviors and attitudes towards nutrition. Students were measured prior to participating in the program, after participating, and again three months later to test changes in important variables. Read the full evaluation report here.

Why Nutrition Education is Important?

Kindergarten grade teacher, Michelle Mead, explains why food literacy is important for students.

Watch here

Nutrition Philosophy

Discover how we define a 'healthy eating pattern.'

Education Philosophy

Learn what nutrition education means to us.