Horticultural Activities Using Colorful Food for the Improvement of Emotional Intelligence and the Reduction of Unbalanced Vegetable Diet of Young Children

Abstract

This study focuses on horticultural activities using colorful food to reduce diets unbalanced in vegetables and to increase emotional intelligence. Horticultural activities using colorful food vegetables were based on ʻHealth in Daily Lifeʼ in the ʻ7th Kindergarten Curriculumʼ; to improve the dietary habits of the young children, the program was also linked with a parentsʼ education program. The research was conducted with a total of 70 children from classes for four-year-olds in three child-care centers located in Seoul. The horticultural activities based upon nutrition education included activities using colorful food vegetables and nutrition education. For the nutrition education group, only nutrition education was provided, while neither horticultural activities nor nutrition education were provided to the control group. The study was conducted from September to December 2011. A total of twelve sessions were conducted once a week for 60 minutes each. According to the result, after the horticultural activities with colorful food vegetable were conducted, both the nutrition education group and horticultural activity & nutrition education group showed improvements in ʻNutrition Knowledgeʼ compared to the control group. Regarding ʻUnbalanced Diet Behaviorsʼ, the horticultural activities & nutrition education group showed meaningful decreases compared to the control group. Moreover for preference of fruits and vegetables, the horticultural activities & nutrition education group revealed meaningful improvements. In conclusion, colorful food vegetable horticultural activity could be an effective approach to resolve the imbalance of health caused by unbalanced diets as children who participated in the colorful food vegetable horticultural activities continued to respond spontaneously to the colors of vegetables and fruits and showed joy and kept voluntarily eating them.

Analysis of Horticultural Activities in the Teacher’s Guidebooks of Nuri Curriculum for 5-Year-Olds

“…However, compared to preschoolers who participated in taking a walk, those who participated in horticultural activities based on direct experience of nature showed improvement in emotional intelligence as well as sub-factors such as emotional self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, emotional awareness of others, and emotional regulation of others(Ryu et al, 2013). Moreover, in consistent with the study proving that horticultural activities in which participants could actually cultivate color food vegetables helped them consume vegetables voluntarily, thereby significantly reducing avoidance of vegetables and improving emotional intelligence(Son et al, 2015), it is reported that active participation in horticultural activities resulted in greater effect than passive and participation in horticultural activities. Furthermore, preschool children that participated in horticultural activities accepted them as fun and interesting, and preferred plant activities in which they had participated and have much experience(Park and Huh, 2010).As a result of a meta-analysis on the effects of horticultural activities and horticultural therapy in each class, it was found that implementing 11 sessions of the horticultural program is more effective than implementing 10 or less…”

Fruit and vegetable intakes in relation to behavioral outcomes associated with a nutrition education intervention in preschoolers

“…The population-based study [ 11 ] only had a cross-sectional measurement of emotional and behavioral outcomes and did not assess fruit and vegetable intakes. In addition, previous studies on the relationship between eating habits and behavior outcomes of preschoolers reported that preschoolers who hated vegetables exhibited high self-centeredness, aggressiveness, and high anxiety [ 18 ], whereas preschoolers with poor eating habits showed lower adaptability, stability, sociability, and higher self-esteem than those with good eating habits, although a direct comparison was not feasible due to a lack of measurement of fruit and vegetable intakes [ 19 ].…”

Garden-Based Integrated Intervention for Improving Children’s Eating Behavior for Vegetables

“…As per the search results, 40 research papers were used as reference to verify the effectiveness of the garden-based program to improve children's eating behavior. The five factors that mediated the association between garden-based activity and children's eating behavior for vegetables and fruits extracted from 40 studies were "skills required to engage in gardening" [23][24][25], "knowledge of nutrition, fruit, and vegetable" [19,[26][27][28], "willingness to try new food (food neophobia)" [25,26,29], "dietary self-efficacy" [19,27,28], and "fruit and vegetable preference" [19,[25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…Accordingly, various methods such as school garden programs, nutrition education, or cooking activities have been attempted to improve children's eating behavior worldwide [11][12][13]. In particular, gardening, in which children themselves plant, grow, and harvest vegetables, have been reported to reduce their revulsion toward vegetables and increase their preference for and understanding of various types of foods and leading to increased vegetable consumption [14][15][16][17][18][19]. In a previous study, as 304 students predominately Hispanic/Latino third-through fifth-grade in elementary school were randomly assigned to either the LA Sprouts group (nutrition, cooking, and gardening intervention) or control group, a number of determinants of dietary behaviors such as identification of vegetables and nutrition and gardening knowledge for LA Sprouts group has positively changed after the program [20].…”