The Dietary Guidelines as didactic material in teacher training: analysis and application

Abstract

This work focuses on the use and interpretation of the Food Guides or Dietary Guidelines given their importance in Food Education. Initially and from a certain verification of informative dispersion, we elaborated a synthesis which described the basic information that we considered that these Guides should include and with which we usually work. We present an investigation with students from the 4th year of a Teacher Training Degree (n=173), who completed a questionnaire prepared for this purpose, before and after receiving specific training on Food in which an important part was specifically directed to the use of these guides. The results indicate that the initial knowledge about these resources is clearly inadequate for the great majority of students in all the informative analyzed fields. After teaching, the information that students seem to perceive from the images of the instruments analyzed (Food Guide Wheel and Pyramid) is independent of the model and in general could clearly be improved for most. But if only the evolution of theoretical concepts is approached, better results are achieved. Therefore, we consider necessary to work on the design and use of the analyzed instruments as a didactic resource and improved the way of transmitting information through them trying to further integrate the visual with the theoretical and conceptual.