Abstract
Food is important in physical and cognitive development of teenagers. The objective of the study was to determine the effectiveness of an existing structured nutritional education program to enhance dietary knowledge, attitudes, and habits among school boys in Rahim Yar Khan in Pakistan under the quasi experimental design that involved exposure of 150 male students who participated in the study (between 10- 17 years) to a nine-week nutrition education intervention program with pre/post-test evaluation using the knowledge attitude practice questionnaires (KAP), which were validated. The present research used several already existing behavioral models, among them Health Belief Model (HBM), Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to investigate the effect of education on dietary choices. The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test of data analysis has shown that there is a slight improvement, including food labeling knowledge and awareness of the beneficial microorganisms. But in other areas of knowledge such as the knowledge of the sources of fiber, calcium, and proteins, there was little or slow knowledge increase. There was also limited attitude change. The nutrition habits were somewhat improved; the intake of energy drinks decreased, and the intake of sweet juices decreased. There was no significant difference in meal regularity, fruit/veggie intake and awareness of calorically dense food, which is an indication of acquisition of knowledge versus behavior change. These conflicting outcomes depict that knowledge does not necessarily translate to behavioral application. This study subsequently concludes that nutritional education in itself is not good enough to cause any significant attitudinal and behavioral shifts among the teenagers and it therefore follows that any sustainable change in the dietary habits of teenagers must be a multi-pronged approach that is dominated by structured education, participatory learning, stakeholder involvement and behavioral reinforcement among other aspects