The purpose of this paper is to present a brief review of the current literature on nutrition education during early childhood. The literature is reviewed in three areas: (1) Need for Nutrition Education in Early Childhood Schooling;
(2) Objectives of Nutritional Education in Early Childhood Schooling; and (3) Types of Nutritional Education Programs serving the needs of young children.
Need For Nutritional Education in Early Childhood Schooling
According to Papalia and Olds (1992), proper growth and health depends upon good nutrition. The authors state that although most young children have nutritional requirements that are met relatively easily, the failure to meet these needs can result in a variety of both minor and major illness and/or slow recovery from one of these illnesses.
Minor illnesses include coughs, stomaches, colds, and so forth. Major illnesses include everything from measles and polio through cancer.
While clearly, none of the foregoing conditions are always related to poor nutrition, there are some conditions which, if seen in early childhood, have a very high probability of being related to poor nutrition. According to Wiecha (1991), those physical conditions which are most commonly associated with poor nutrition in children include overweight, short stature, and iron deficiency anemia.
Clarke-Stewart, Friedman and Koch (1985) state that another negative consequence of poor nutrition is slow academic progress or failure, this due to the debilitating effects of poor nutrition on the child's growing brain. However, since malnutrition often exists concurrently with a number of social conditions such as poverty, chaotic family structure, poor housing, ignorance and despair, the authors note that parcelling out the effects of these factors from the nutrition factor is not always easily done. Clarke-Stewart et al. do note that in countries like Sweden where both poor and rich have access...