The Effect of Teaching Consumption of Organic Foods on Nutritional Knowledge and Performance of High School Students

Background & objectives: Today, the world is facing with increase of population and shortage of foods. Organic products are produced without the intervention of any chemicals or artificial methods. In spite of general teaching to increase nutritional knowledge, there still is a deep gap between recommendations and what is seen in nutritional performance, so choosing the right teaching methods is very important. The present study was conducted to compare the effect of teaching of organic foods consumption by both traditional and participatory methods on nutritional knowledge and performance of ninth grade female high school students in Shahriyar. Methods: In terms of purpose, this study was an applied study and in terms of data collection method, a field trial with two experimental groups and a control group. The statistical population was composed of ninth grade students of Fazilat High School located in Shahriyar, among who 90 students were selected by convenience sampling method and divided into groups by simple random substitution. The control group received no teaching. An experimental group received teaching by traditional method and another experimental group received teaching by participatory method. The questionnaire in this study was a researcher-made questionnaire with 32 questions. Questions 1 to 18 were related to nutritional knowledge variable and questions 19 to 32 were related to nutritional performance variable. The reliability, content and construct validities of questionnaire were confirmed by Cronbach's alpha, opinion of experts and confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. Results: According to the results of analysis of covariance, at 95% confidence level, teaching of consumption of organic foods by participatory method had no significant effect on students' nutritional knowledge. The effect of teaching on students' nutritional knowledge by traditional method was significant, since significance level ( p =0.0001 and F=49.64) was less than 0.05 and this effect was equal to 0.46. The effect of teaching on students' nutritional performance by participatory method at significance level of p =0.0001 and F=42.21 was equal to 0.42 and by traditional method at significance level of p =0.021 and F=5.64 was equal to 0.10. Conclusion: Teaching the consumption of organic foods by traditional method compared to participatory method, had a greater effect on nutritional knowledge of ninth grade high school students. Also, teaching organic food consumption by participatory method had a greater effect on nutritional performance of ninth grade high school students compared to traditional method.