Nur Alaçam
It was aimed to investigate the influence of an activity-based nutrition education on the nutrition related perceptions of five-year-old children in this study. The posttest non-equivalent control group design was employed, and a total of 111 children participated. Data were collected with the group discussion and an adapted Healthy Food Knowledge Activity. It was analyzed with the inductive thematic approach, descriptive statistics, and independent sample t-tests. The results showed that children are conscious of basic healthy or unhealthy foods; however, they cannot think complex when it contains a variety of ingredients together. After the education, a statistically significant difference was found in the healthy food perception mean scores between the experimental and control group in favor the experimental one. Moreover, girls were also found to have significantly higher scores than boys in the healthy food perceptions. It was concluded that nutrition related educations are useful to support children’s perceptions about healthy nutrition.