Watching TV Cooking Programs: Effects on Actual Food Intake Among Children

Objective: To test the effects of a cooking program on healthy food decisions.

Design: An experimental between-subjects design with 3 conditions: healthy, unhealthy, and control.

Setting: Class settings in 5 different schools.

Participants: One hundred twenty-five children between 10 and 12 years of age.

Interventions: Video clips of cooking program containing healthy foods versus cooking program containing unhealthy foods versus control program.

Main outcome measures: Healthy versus unhealthy food choice.

Analysis: Logistic regression analysis, with the control condition as a reference in the first contrast test and the unhealthy food condition as a reference in the second contrast, to examine effects on food choice between conditions.

Results: Children who watched the cooking program with healthy foods had a higher probability of selecting healthy food than children who watched the cooking program with unhealthy foods (P = .027), or with the control condition (P = .039).

Conclusions and Implications: These findings indicated a priming effect of the foods the children were exposed to, showing that nutrition education guided by reactivity theory can be promising. Cooking pro- grams may affect the food choices of children and could be an effective method in combination with other methods to improve their dietary intake.