This study seeks to influence choices made by Kindergarten students in a Title I school who receive free breakfast and lunch through a health literacy intervention with the intent of decreasing daily added sugar consumption. Fruit and milk choices, either with naturally occurring sugar (NOS) or added sugar (AS), were recorded for 70 Kindergarten students among six classes in a Title I school for ten days before a four-week health literacy intervention. Three of the classes were randomly selected to learn about 'sometimes' and 'anytime' choices through the Healthy Habits for Life curriculum delivered by representatives from Nemours Children's Hospital. Following the intervention, milk and fruit choices were recorded for ten more school days to determine differences among the control and intervention groups. Pearson Chi Square test results concluded that the health literacy intervention lead to statistically significant improvements in milk choices for the intervention group, but fruit choices were inconclusive due to inconsistencies in significance. Hierarchical loglinear analyses were run to determine if there was a difference in response to intervention between male and female students, and the results indicated that the effectiveness of the intervention was not moderated by gender. The success of this intervention for milk choices will help students who receive free school breakfast and lunch to decrease their daily consumption of added sugars, and additional research needs to be done to help students make choices that will further decrease their daily added sugar consumption.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-7514 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| Creators | Kent, Melissa |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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