Piaget-Based Nutrition Education in Preschools

This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study evaluated a six-week Piaget-based nutrition education programme for preschool children. Seven public preschools were randomized at the school level to an intervention condition (three preschools) or a usual-curriculum control condition (four preschools). The intervention consisted of six weekly, approximately 30-minute, developmentally tailored sessions delivered to groups of children in their usual classrooms. Mothers completed measures of children's food consumption frequency, nutrition behavior, and eating behavior before and immediately after the programme. Following the quantitative phase, three focus groups with 18 mothers from intervention preschools explored perceived changes and helped interpret the quantitative patterns. Because preschool identifiers were not retained in the final analytical dataset, the reported child-level analyses did not adjust for clustering and are interpreted as exploratory.