1. THE KITCHEN GARDEN, FOOD ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR
Westerman, L (2005) "Gardening, Cooking and Enjoying Food – Together: Does participation in a
school based Kitchen Garden program influence children's vegetable related behaviour and
attitudes?" (unpublished public health honours thesis) La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia
Abstract
Research has found that nutrition education alone is not enough to change diet
behaviour. This may be because a primary determinant of food choice is taste and
liking, often precluded by food neophobia. Teaching children about food by teaching
them how to grow, cook and enjoy eating it has the potential to change behaviour
independently from nutrition education and knowledge. Social Cognitive Theory
(SCT) and Attitude-Self Efficacy-Environment (ASE) models form the foundations of
interventions combining nutrition education with practical skill development, self
efficacy and cognitive learning, aiming to produce positive diet behaviour outcomes.
The Kitchen Garden program at Collingwood College integrates such components,
but is designed simply to help children learn to appreciate food. A questionnaire and
set of scales were devised to measure the impact of the program on participants’
knowledge of, liking of and willingness to try specific vegetable and dishes, food
neophobia, cooking self efficacy, and cooking attitudes and behaviour. This study
compared the responses of children (M age = 11) who had participated in the Kitchen
Garden (n = 26) and children who had not (n = 19) to the questionnaire. The impact
of specific individual behaviours on scale scores was also investigated. Statistical
analysis revealed that the Kitchen Garden program does not significantly influence
mean scale scores of participants when compared with the control group. Positive
relationships were found between scale scores and home cooking attitudes and
behaviours, such as cooking at home, eating meals with family and eating home
cooked meals. The data suggests that home based behaviours have an overriding
influence on children’s diet behaviour and attitudes. Despite the small sample size,
these findings may assist in enhancing nutrition outcomes from the Kitchen Garden
program. Integration of a family outreach component may address external barriers to
behaviour change. The program and studies would further benefit from pre and post
exposure evaluation, with a larger sample size to increase data reliability, and a
longitudinal design over several years to measure long term behaviour change
potential.