A few weeks ago I posted about our revamped Child and Teen Friendly Food category in this year’s FreeFrom Food Awards in which we are trying to tease out what children really think about the nutritional content of their food. So I was especially interested in an alert from FAB (Food and Behaviour Research) about their new programme which is designed to help children, their parents and their teachers understand how nutrition can affect not only the children’s bodies but their brains.
Since they are looking for teachers, parents and children to take part in a new pilot study – I thought I would put it out there. Here is what FAB say about the project and how to get in touch if you would like to be involved.
One of FAB’s key priorities is to inform and educate as wide an audience as possible on the links between nutrition and human behaviour. And helping children, and those who care for them, to understand more about how food and diet can affect mood, behaviour and learning is essential.
To that end, we’re currently piloting a new FAB Schools programme, aimed at helping children, parents and teachers to learn more about how nutrition shapes brains as well as bodies, and what changes they can make towards achieving better dietary balance.
This includes information and educational materials, including a simple system based on healthy eating guidelines so that parents, teachers and children over 8-9 years can quickly learn how to assess and improve the nutritional quality of any meal (in this case, school lunches). We’re also exploring how the nutritional quality of children’s lunches may relate to behaviour, mood and learning both before and after the educational intervention, to see how these may change.
As with most such research, this pilot study wouldn’t be possible at all without the interest, help and commitment of the participants – in this case, school leaders and teachers in particular, but also the parents, and the children involved. And we’re more than lucky to have two very special FAB volunteers whose expertise, experience and dedication have been key to setting up and running this exciting pilot project (with almost 1000 children involved to date).
We’re planning to open up this project to other schools as soon as we can.
• If you’d like your school to be involved, or would like more information, please get in touch by emailing us at: Info@fabresearch.org
• If you can, please help support the expansion of our FAB Schools programme by joining as an Associate or making a donation.
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