A NUTRITION EDUCATION PROGRAM BASED ON MEDIA EDUCATION

Recent research seems to find evidence for the association between various factors related to eating problems and the model of female beauty transmitted by the media. If the media affect to attitudes, perceptions and behaviours of children and young people, to promote a critical attitude towards the messages can reduce their impact. Thus, media education should be a part of those educational interventions that try to encourage healthy habits. Studies have examined the effectiveness of nutrition education programs that include a critical view toward media, and they are agreed on the interest of using interactive formats to enhance the positive impact on changing attitudes, that is so important in health education.

This work is part of a broader research that aims to verify whether an educational program focused on building critical attitudes towards the media can help to mitigate the effects their messages have on the ideas, attitudes and behaviours related to nutrition. More specifically, it seeks to reduce the influence of images of thin female body ideal on the different factors associated with eating disorders. We have designed a nutrition education program based on media education for future elementary teachers of School of Education in Vitoria.

The program has contents on nutrition and on media. The first one focuses on issues related to diet. The second one, more extensive, seeks to increase the critical capacities of students towards media messages that promote a model of female beauty characterized by thinness. The program follows an interactive methodology that includes the use of the Moodle platform. The way we work is mainly in small groups, both in the classroom and online. The subject has been divided into various sections oriented through problems that students should try to resolve through participation in various forums to share opinions, ideas and materials obtained mostly on the internet. The evaluation of this educational intervention will be based on the observation of the working sessions in the classroom and on the network, and in the results of several questionnaires that seek to detect possible changes made in eating attitudes, body image and effects of media on body image. This research will serve for improving the training of preservice elementary teachers in nutrition education based on media education.