Abstract:

The importance of food habits to promote healthier status of populations is currently unquestionable, being included in most public health strategies. Children are a key group, since they are in the moment of developing healthy or unhealthy habits; also, young people are specially sensitive, being very active in using technology and social media, highly influenceable, and often without a clear criteria to differentiate true from fake information. In these groups of population, misinformation can have serious negative influence in the health status of individuals. Thus, scientists and health professionals, with competence on education of people in food and nutrition areas, may have a key role in promoting a better health status on these population groups.

For those reasons, based in previous experience, in this work a service-learning experience was performed with the following objectives:
i) making students aware of their role on public health promotion;
ii) developing a community service on promoting healthy food habits in children and young population.

A chain experience of teaching-learning has been performed, involving: 3 Postgraduate University Students, 4 Graduate University students of Degrees of Pharmacy, Nutrition and Dietetics and Food Science and Technology, 112 Secondary Education students, 100 Primary Education students and 60 young students from a Special Education Center (intellectual diversity including limitations in knowledge and understanding, higher impulsivity and/or lower perception of satiety, which make them highly vulnerable).

Students of each level worked on contents included in the programs of their Degrees (for University students) and also in the subjects of Biology (for ESO students) and Natural Sciences (for Primary Educations students). Then, as a part of the ApS methodology (learning-by-doing) that they practice, they prepared workshops devoted to younger students, with the supervision of university and school teachers. Each group created materials consisting of audiovisual presentations, manual and digital games, and other dynamic activities to make the participants more able to detect clues of fake news on the information they receive and improve their knowledge on healthy habits related to food and nutrition.

This initiative was globally perceived as a real experience of chain transmission of knowledge at a community level: each group acted as a link to others and made possible a fluent learning, since the ages of each group were closer to the receptors; this made easier to transmit the intended messages. As a result, the university students could develop their skills for the education of people, which was perceived by them as a professional activity. On the other hand, teenagers participating felt that they can have an impact on society health and nutrition habits through the transmission of information. From their answers to questionnaires, more than 80% recognize that after the workshop they know more than before and would recommend the activity to other people.

To conclude, this learning-by-doing experience allowed to disseminate knowledge from a small group (6 grade and postgraduate students) to more of 150 children, teenagers and young people, achieving the main goal for a global service-learning project. It has contributed to improve their health status, and make them aware of their importance as transmitters of true information, especially in topics related to food and health.

Keywords:

Service-Learning, fake news, foods, nutrition, health, intellectual diversity.