Impact of a Service Learning (SL) Experience on the Improvement of Knowledge in Healthy Eating Habits in Teenagers

In this article, we evaluate the results of a service learning (SL) experience, conducted by students of the 4th course of Human Nutrition and Dietetics (ND) degree, trained as health promoting agents (HPA), from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) applied in a sample of high school teenagers from Reus. The aim of the SL experience was to know of healthy eating habits with special attention to the structure of meals and the health effects of alcohol. We evaluated 533 teenagers, female 52.7%, aged 11 to 15, from 5 different public and charter high schools of Reus in 2015-16 academic year. It consisted in a 1h-activity designed and performed by ND students and developed in the teenager high school classroom using audio-visual support. ND students evaluated the changes in healthy knowledge before and after the only activity by a questionnaire score (100 points). The final assessment of the teenagers was improved 4.85 points respect to the initial and seems to be more effective in younger teenagers, Girls get a better initial evaluation score than boys, but both improved their knowledge after the activity. Public high school teenagers have lower initial and final knowledge about nutrition than charter school teenagers. In conclusion, an only 1-hour SL experience implemented in high school and developed by university HPA is an easy tool to improve healthy nutritional knowledge in teenagers.