Interactive, Multimedia Nutrition Literacy Teaching Tool for Classroom Instruction

An estimated 88% of children ages 6-12 and 94% of children age 13-18 have a poor diet that needs improvement. Only 1% of the nation's children meet all the Food Guide Pyramid nutritional recommendations. Fifty-one percent of the nation's children meet all the Food Guide Pyramid nutritional recommendations. Fifty-one percent of children and adolescents eat less than one serving of fruit a day, and 29% eat less than one serving a day of vegetables that are not fried. Diet is a known risk factor for the three leading causes of death -- heart disease, cancer, and stroke -- as well as for diabetes, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis. The objective of this study is to develop and field test a full-scale interactive, multimedia nutrition education resource that combines CD-ROM and Internet technologies to provide teachers lessons in four subjects -- science, math, language arts and social studies -- that can be integrated into existing fourth grade curriculum. The project will develop 50 lessons and related instructional resources and field test them with a sample of 480 students in 24 classrooms in ten different schools. The study employs a pre-test/post-test experimental research design to determine the extent to which the nutrition education CD-ROM increases students nutritional knowledge and improves the food choices of students toward a healthier diet.