Nutrikids: juego serio para el desarrollo del conocimiento nutricional en niños y adolescentes.

Abstract

Obesity is identified as a global epidemic that triggers consequences such as increased morbidities, increased risk of developing metabolic, cardiovascular, liver diseases, cancer, diabetes, among others. Knowledge about nutrition and healthy eating in children and adolescents is one of the alternatives that stand out for its prevention. Thus, this paper presents the assessment of learning resulting from the application of the Nutrikids game. This game was developed to increase nutritional knowledge in children and adolescents. To this end, a quasi-experimental study randomized by group was carried out with 105 students aged 9 to 12 years old from two Brazilian public schools, which were divided into the Lecture Group that received information through lectures (n = 51) and the Game Group who received the same information through the Nutrikids game (n = 54) who received intervention for a month, often once a week for thirty minutes. To assess nutritional knowledge, both groups underwent a pre-test before the start of the intervention and a post-test at the end. It was observed that both groups increased their nutritional knowledge and that the Game Group had a larger effect on learning and better evaluation regardless of gender. Thus, the use of the Nutrikids game proved to be more effective for teaching nutritional knowledge when compared to traditional expository classes.