What is Nutrition Education?
Nutrition education can be defined as any set of learning experiences designed for individuals who want to take up the habit of eating healthy food and other nutrition-related behaviors beneficial for health and well-being.
How does it Work?
Health professionals play a different role in educating an individual in the clinic, community, or long-term health-care facility. Moreover, in these settings, the dietician, nutritionist, or nurse serves to assist or enable individuals to incorporate changes in eating patterns and behavior into their lives.
Importance of Nutrition Education:
The major focus of this type of nutrition is not knowledge and facts, but rather the development of permanent behavioral changes. Nutritional education is an education for life. Establishing healthy dietary and nutrition habits during childhood enriches quality of life while growing older.
Nutrition Education in Schools:
It is extremely important that nutrition education be given in schools. The school provides a rich and dynamic environment which can assist in achieving this goal through multiple learning strategies, environmental support and collaboration with individuals and groups inside and outside the school. In this way, they can take action where necessary to create an environment which is more conducive to healthier eating.
Children, nowadays, are growing obese and do not care about what they consume. Besides nutrition education, environmental factors such as a decrease in physical activity and increase in energy intake have led to severe inactivity in children. Therefore, this increase in body mass index has led to Hypertension, Metabolic Syndrome, and Type 2 Diabetes and many other chronic diseases. Poor nutrition habits and lack of physical activity have led to this increase of obesity that leads from childhood to adulthood. Lack of funding and insufficient resources has led to poor nutrition education.
Furthermore, schools play an important role in helping students establish healthy eating behaviors, by providing:
- Nutritious and appealing foods and beverages to the children
- Consistent and accurate messages about good nutrition
- Ways to learn about and practice healthy eating
What Can We Do?
As responsible citizens it is important for us not just to learn about foods and nutrients, but also learn what to do and how to act to improve nutrition. All of us can play our part in making the society a better and healthier place to live in by:
- Promoting lifelong healthy eating habits
- Going beyond the classroom: involving the whole school, families and the community
- Developing national guidelines for better diets and nutrition
- Creating environments that support good nutrition and healthful food choices
Conclusion:
It is pertinent for everyone; children, adults as well as older people to know the importance of nutrition education. Furthermore, one should educate himself on the nutrients and its facts and then apply it himself. In this way we can make the world a better, richer and healthier place to live in!
