A new educational tool to learn about hydration: taste workshops for children

Nutrition education contributes to children´s understanding and practice of healthy lifestyles behaviors. Having a well hydration status is an essential topic, especially since children are a vulnerable population who are much more  prone to dehydration than adults are. The approval of the Report on the European Gastronomic Heritage: Cultural and Educational Aspects in 2014 served as starting point to work on innovative audio-visual and multimedia materials for children. The Spanish Nutrition Foundation (FEN) and the Royal Academy of Gastronomy (RAG), in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport in Spain (MECD),  developed educational videos for schoolchildren to learn about food, nutrition and gastronomy, specially, the importance of being hydrated.

To develop a serial of videos for children between 3 and 9 years old with nutrition and cooking lessons to be used as educational resources in the official curricula.

Fourteen chapters related to food, nutrition, gastronomy, physical activity and hydration to be used to record videos were designed and tested. A nutritionist, a chef and two puppets were the main characters acting in the videos.

The chapters were assembled in nine videos that included five sections: introduction, video lesson, recipes -in case of hydration, recipes with different water content foods were recorded-, what have you learntand check your knowledge. A summary of the new educational material was officially presented at the Spain Pavilion during the Expo Milano 2015. Moreover, they are included as education  tool for teachers in the new PANGEI Programme (Food, Nutrition and Gastronomy for Infantile Education) conjointly launched by FEN, RAG and MEDC.

Taste workshops are useful as innovative nutrition education tools to reinforce language, listening and motor skills as well as food and nutrition concepts, and specially, the importance of being well hydrated.