Kaledo, a new educational board-game for nutrition education

Introduction: A successful nutrition education during childhood and adolescence periods could decrease the incidence of adult overweight and obesity. We developed Kale`do, a new board-game, to promote nutrition knowledge and healthy lifestyle. Objective: To test the efficacy of Kale`do on changes in nutrition knowledge and feeding behavior in 12 middle schools in Campania, Italy. Methods: A two group design (treatment and control) with 1 preintervention assessment and 2 post-intervention assessments was used. Data analysis was performed on 1614 students. During 20 weeks, a group of 793 students (6 schools) was involved in 15– 30 minute-long play sessions with Kale`do once a week. They were requested to fill the ‘Adolescent Food Habits Checklist’ of Johnson et al. and the dietary questionnaire of Turconi et al. at the beginning of the study and at 6 months and 18 months after starting the scheduled play sessions. A control group (821 students from 6 schools) was investigated at the same times with the same questionnaire but they did not participate in any play session with Kale`do. Results: The score of the Adolescent Food Habits Checklist was significantly higher in the treated group than in the control at 6 months. Moreover, the scores from 5 subsections of the dietary questionnaire were significantly different between the treated and the control groups at 6 months. Most of these differences disappeared at the reassessment at 18 months. Conclusion: Our results show that Kale`do can influence dietary behavior and can be an effective tool for nutrition education